


COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



















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THE BOYS’ OWN BOOK 
OF FRONTIERSMEN 



CARSON ON THE SANTA FE TRAIL 


































































































































THE BOYS’ OWN BOOK 
OF FRONTIERSMEN 


BY 

ALBERT BRITT 


AUTHOR OF 

“THE BOYS’ OWN BOOK OF 
ADVENTURERS,” Etc. 


Nrm fnrfe 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1924 


All rights reserved 


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Copyright, 1924, 

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 


Set up and electrotyped. 
Published November, 1924. 



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Printed in the United States of America by 
THE FERRIS PRINTING COMPANY, NEW YORK. 


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CONTENTS 


CHAP. PAGE 

Introduction: The Frontier Land . xiii 

I. Kit Carson, the Blazer of Trails. 1 

II. Sam Houston, the Maker of Texas 28 

III. George Rogers Clark, Conqueror of the Illinois 47 

IV. Daniel Boone, Wilderness Hunter. 67 

V. Alexander Henry, Fur Trade Pioneer.: 94 

VI. Joe Meek, the Messenger from Oregon. 124 


VII. Peter Cartwright, the Frontier Preacher ... 145 

VIII. Wild Bill Hickok, the King of the Gunmen . . 161 

IX. Davy Crockett, Bear-Hunter and Hero of the 

Alamo. 177 

X. Sir William Johnson, the Lord of the Iroquois. 199 
















I 



































































ILLUSTRATIONS 


Carson on the Santa Fe Trail. 

Joe Meek at the Steamship Landing . . . 

The Alamo. 

Three Hundred Hard Miles to San Antonio . 


. . Frontispiece 
Facing page 140 
Facing page 177 
Facing page 194 























































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































THE BOYS’ OWN BOOK 
OF FRONTIERSMEN 















THE FRONTIER LAND 


A MERICA is the land of the frontiersman. No- 
** where else in the history of the world has there 
been a continent ready for the taking and a race of men 
prepared for the task. To be sure, the white race 
has driven its way into South America, Africa, Asia, 
but all these have offered barriers of climate or of a 
previous civilization too deeply rooted to be sup¬ 
planted. Only in North America has the issue be¬ 
tween man and the wilderness been sharply drawn and 
definitely fought out. 

It happens, too, that in our early history the prob¬ 
lems and the conditions of the frontier have been 
clearly presented in the lives and exploits of partic¬ 
ular men. To say this does not mean that there were 
not others—many others—who amply deserve men¬ 
tion. Boone was not the only man in Kentucky and 
there were other heroes of the Alamo beside Davy 
Crockett. To tell the full story of the American 
frontier would require many books and long years 
in the telling. 

In the present volume the attempt has been made 
only to present the characters that combined in them¬ 
selves elements of the active, the picturesque, and 
the important. At the same time each man made his 
own large personal contribution to the life of his time, 
xiii 


xiv The Frontier Land 

The American frontier was as wide as the continent 
and as varied. Yet there is a similarity that runs 
through it all and the riflemen of Kentucky were 
blood brothers to the men who tamed the mountains. 
It was in large part the sons and grandsons of the 
frontiersmen of the East and South who were the 
pioneers of the prairies and the farther West. 

The American frontier began when the first Eng¬ 
lish settlers landed at Jamestown and Plymouth and 
it has disappeared only within the memory of the gen¬ 
eration now living. 

In some sense the men who are shown in the 
chapters that follow offer in their own lives a personal 
history of our country. To write of Kentucky with¬ 
out at the same time telling the story of Boone would 
be akin to telling the tale of the Revolution with no 
mention of George Washington. 

It was Sam Houston who made the republic of 
Texas, more than any other one man, and having made 
it and brought it alive through the fight at San Jacinto, 
it was his shrewd common sense that brought it into 
the Union. Other men fought at the Alamo beside 
Crockett. To overlook Travis and the stark, grim 
Bowie is to do a serious injustice. Yet as against 
their claim to attention, Crockett stands out the su¬ 
preme product of the South of his time, rude, unlet¬ 
tered, restless, daring, brave beyond words to charac¬ 
terize. Starting from nothing he ran the gamut of 
American ambitions and activities of that crude time, 
rising even to a hope of the presidency. When he 
died in the Alamo fight, it was a great symbolic figure 


The Frontier Land 


xv 


of the frontier that passed rather than a mere fighter. 
And it is as such that his memory survives. 

There were other guides than Carson, and men who 
knew their business too. But in the life of Kit Carson 
was exemplified all that was rich and varied in the 
quick-moving drama of his time and place. Meek will 
not live as the man who saved Oregon. That dis¬ 
tinction probably belongs to Dr. Whitman. And to 
still other men will go the credit for the political foun¬ 
dation of the new commonwealths in the Northwest. 
But men like Meek gave color and vigor to the hum¬ 
drum business of plowing and chopping and building. 
He was of the old day of the trapper and the trader, 
and he turned with a sweeping gesture to fall in with 
the new step of the settler. 

Each man has a definite reason. Even the housing 
of two such different characters as Peter Cartwright, 
the wilderness preacher, and Wild Bill Hickok, the 
king of the gunmen, within the covers of the same book 
is not illogical. Each was a legitimate product of his 
time and place. To both are to be attributed the same 
characteristics of courage, truthfulness, and simplicity. 
Red as the record is on some of the pages, Hickok 
fought for law and order as he saw it and kept his 
feet in a whirlwind where many good men went down. 
Not to know him is to fail to understand the men and 
the things of the prairie country in the years immedi¬ 
ately following the Civil War. 

No attempt has been made to follow the Canadian 
frontier except as it was touched by Alexander Henry. 
At the time of his activity in the West there was no 


xvi The Frontier Land 

international fence at latitude 49 and no immediate 
danger of the erection of one. When he left the civ¬ 
ilization of New York, the English colonists were still 
in the first flush of their rejoicing over the beating of 
the French. When he returned fifteen years later, 
that was already ancient history and Indians greeted 
him along the way with news that a new nation had 
arisen that knew not King George. 

It was George Rogers. Clark who saved the Missis¬ 
sippi Valley for the struggling colonies. Without his 
campaign in Illinois, England could have sat at the 
peace table with the dangerous card of control of the 
Middle West in her hand. Lacking that she lacked 
all, and the young United States embarked upon a 
career of independence with an opportunity wide open 
beyond the Alleghenies. 

And there is Sir William Johnson, the lord of the 
wilderness manor, the friend and ruler of the tempes¬ 
tuous Iroquois. The work of his hands disappeared 
in the Revolution and he is remembered too much as 
a Briton domiciled in the colonies. Without him the 
issue of the long struggle with the French and Indians 
along the New York border would have been very 
doubtful and more than one red page would have been 
written into the annals of New York. Differing from 
his brother frontiersmen in manner of life and associ¬ 
ation, he was one with them in directness, simplicity, 
and instant answer to the urgent need. 

Much has been said and written of pioneer vir¬ 
tues, usually with the mournful air of one who laments 
their passing. Virtues there were, of necessity. Men 


The Frontier Land 


XVII 


and women were brave because without bravery life 
was impossible. They were frugal largely because they 
had to be. Where there is little there can be no waste. 
They were helpful to each other because each of them 
knew that next day it might be his need that cried 
loudest. They were sturdy, because weaklings died 
young. 

They were no saints. Drinking was common, ex¬ 
cept in the early Puritan settlements of New England 
and in parts of Pennsylvania. The frontiersman him¬ 
self was often half Indian in manner of living and 
especially in habits of fighting. The scalplock hung 
at the belt of the white hunter as well as in the teepee 
of the savage. In his hours of ease he often caroused 
hard and boasted as loudly as any Indian brave after a 
battle. But he was among his peers who knew that 
he could make the boast good. 

To say all this is to detract nothing from the praise 
due him. In fact, it is to add to it. He fought the 
wilderness with the weapons that the time and 
the place provided and with matchless courage and 
persistence. As fast as one fell two stepped forward. 
They were the forelopers, the men who led the way. 
Behind the bearer of the rifle and the axe came the 
surveyor, the settler, the road builder, and the founder 
of cities. Each of our American commonwealths has 
a tale to tell of frontiersmen and to ignore it is to miss 
much that is most vivid and colorful in our American 
life. 



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KIT CARSON 


THE BLAZER OF TRAILS 

TT is hard enough at best to think of Kit Carson as 
A a man of everyday characteristics and qualities. 
To give him his full name of Christopher Houston 
Carson is to disguise him utterly. It is only a little 
over half a century since he died, but in that time he 
has become a legend, a tradition. Compared with 
him, Boone, who was an old man when Kit was born, 
and Crockett, who died more than thirty years before 
him in the bloody last dawn of the Alamo, are living 
figures known to the last line of feature and habit. 

And yet neither of these men, nor any others of the 
American frontier guards, were any more important 
in their time and place than Kit Carson was in the 
early days of trail life on the prairies and through the 
Rockies. He is the most heroic—and in some sense 
the most mythical—of the men who helped to open 
the way. This misty vagueness that surrounds the 
mountain men, trappers, guides, and Indian fighters, 
is partly due to the weaknesses and peculiarities of 
many of the alleged biographers and historians of their 
time. Too many of the earlier writers were more 
intent to prove the goodness and righteousness of the 
men and things they described than to tell the truth. 

It was a rough, hard time and none but rough, hard 
1 


2 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

men could keep their feet in them. The trapper who 
ventured into Indian country must be more than half 
Indian in habits of thought and method of living— 
and the best trapping was often in the most dangerous 
country. Indian wars were almost constant in some 
parts of the mountain country and the man with a 
prejudice in favor of wearing his own hair through 
a long life could not be too delicate or scrupulous as 
to his manner of defending himself. The usual rule 
in hostile or suspicious country was to shoot first and 
inquire afterwards. This was particularly true in 
the trapper’s dealings with the Sioux and the Blackfeet. 

It is well to bear these facts in mind in dealing with 
the careers of Kit Carson and his contemporaries. 
Theirs was not a task for faint hearts or reluctant 
hands. This must not be read as meaning that they 
were braggarts or border ruffians without scruple or 
principle. There is abundant evidence that the best 
among them preferred peace to war, justice to ar¬ 
rogance, fair play to the heavy odds in their own favor. 
There were bullies in trapper’s camp and frontier post 
as elsewhere, but they were as a rule short-lived, 
moving on to untried fields—or sometimes to other 
unknown worlds. 

Such a one was Shuman, the French-Canadian bully 
of the rendezvous on the Green River. The whisky 
had been flowing freely and Shuman’s naturally 
truculent disposition was still more inflamed. He 
strode through the camp declaring that the Americans 
were all cowards and that if he chose he could drive 
them out of the mountains with a bull whip. Kit 


Kit Carson 


3 


Carson stood five feet and a half in his moccasins, 
but such talk was little to his liking. As Shuman 
paused before him he glanced up with a cool, gray, 
measuring eye. “If you don’t stop bothering me, I’ll 
probably have to kill you,” drawled Kit. 

Shuman roared his defiance and departed for his 
rifle and his horse. Kit loaded his pistol and mounted 
his own cayuse. They met midway of the camp 
ground, three hundred trappers looking on, and 
Shuman clipped a lock from Kit’s hair with his single 
shot. Carson held his fire till the other had missed 
and then coolly shattered the bully’s arm at the elbow 
and ended that worthy’s fighting days. 

The man who could do this was neither a bully 
nor a coward. He was Kit Carson with the qualities 
of stiff-backed courage that this little man showed all 
his life long. 

In common with many of the roving, adventurous 
spirits of his time Kit owed his origin to Kentucky, 
although when he was only a year or two old his 
parents took him to Missouri. One of his earlier 
biographers traces his line back to the Danish sea 
kings, which is a fair sample of the nonsense that has 
been written about him. As he grew toward maturity 
his father apprenticed him to a saddler at Franklin, 
Missouri, but there is little to indicate that young Kit 
worked long or hard at his trade. 

His first venture into the savage West was at the 
age of sixteen when he ran away and joined a wagoq 
train for Santa Fe. In that day the whole Southwest 
and California belonged to Mexico and there was a 


4 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

thriving trade from St. Louis to the Spanish colonies. 
The Santa Fe Trail was the main artery and a dan¬ 
gerous line it was. Sioux, Comanches, and occasional 
bands of Crows threatened it almost constantly and 
there were white brigands that were even more of 
a menace. 

Young Kit Carson does not seem to have been a 
severe loss to his employer when he followed the great 
trail to the Southwest, at least if we may judge from 
the one cent reward that was offered for his return. 
The story goes that his employer forsook his bench 
only a year later and joined the westward exodus. 
All life moved west in that place and time. There 
were nine boys in the Carson family (the father had 
married twice) and years afterwards the son of one 
of them wrote: “Every one, without a single exception, 
went west in search of the Indian and the buffalo; 
now that the Indian is guarded on the reservations and 
the buffalo is nearly extinct, I am at a loss to know 
what their descendants will do for a pastime.” 

It was in 1826 that young Kit annexed himself to 
a wagon train bound for Santa Fe. It has been 
claimed variously that he was the hunter for the outfit, 
a guide, a wagon guard, and there is a story of an 
amputation performed by him on a teamster wounded 
in the leg by an accidental gunshot. All this is to be 
doubted. The sober, if uninteresting, fact is more 
likely that the boy of the train did the boy’s job, 
which was usually to ride herd on the spare horses 
and mules at the rear of the cavalcade, called the cavvy 
by the wagoners from the Spanish caballado. 


Kit Carson 


5 


In those days the main line of the trail led west 
from Independence, Missouri, through Southern Kan¬ 
sas, crossing the Arkansas River in Western Kansas 
about halfway to Santa Fe. From this point there 
were two routes. One headed west in Colorado and 
crossed over Raton Pass into New Mexico, the line 
now followed by the main line of the Santa Fe Railway. 
The other turned south from the crossing of the Ar¬ 
kansas and headed for what is now the junction of the 
Oklahoma Panhandle and New Mexico. 

The northern route had more water, but the pass 
was at high altitude and impassable in winter and late 
fall. The southern way avoided the mountains, but 
the Cimarron Desert between the Arkansas and Cimar¬ 
ron rivers was dry and hot. The ground was hard 
and there was no marking for the trail. Storms of 
wind and hail were frequent and Indian attacks were 
particularly to be feared in this stretch. It was the 
country of the Pawnees, Kiowas, Comanches, and 
Arapahoes, and occasionally Crows, Sioux, or Blackfeet 
would sweep down from the north. 

For seven hundred and eighty miles the slender 
thread of trail stretched across prairie and mountain. 
The slow teams took fifty to sixty days to cover the 
distance from Independence to Santa Fe loaded and 
perhaps forty days with the lighter loads of the return 
trip. Usually for safety’s sake the traders traveled 
in long trains with adequate guards and even with all 
precautions more than once Indians rushed them in 
the early morning and left a smoking circle on the 


6 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

prairie to mark where the wagons had stood for 
their last fight. 

We are prone to think of Kit Carson in terms of 
scout and Indian fighter. Actually his life divides 
itself naturally into three periods. From 1826 to 
1834 he was a trapper, with only such scouting and 
Indian fighting as was incidental to the taking of 
beaver skins. The year 1834 saw beaver at such a 
low price, due to the change of fashions and the in¬ 
troduction of silk and felt as the material for men’s 
hats, that many of the old mountain trappers drifted 
away to other callings. In that year Kit became a 
hunter for the post of Bent and St. Vrain at Bent’s 
Fort on the Arkansas in Southeastern Colorado and 
here he continued for eight years although he un¬ 
doubtedly carried on trapping as an incident to his 
hunting for the post. 

The final period of his life, from 1842 on, might be 
called his public career. It was in that time that 
he won his great fame as scout and guide for John C. 
Fremont, the Pathfinder, as scout and officer with 
General Phil Kearney during the war with Mexico, 
and as a colonel and later brigadier general of volun¬ 
teers in the Indian wars of the Southwest. 

But there was a long trail to travel before he 
reached that commission as brigadier general. In the 
winter of 1826-7 he was a youth of seventeen nearly 
a thousand miles from home with no money and no 
friends near. There was little work in Santa Fe and 
he made his way to Taos, about forty miles north, a 
favorite rendezvous for trappers and traders. This 


Kit Carson 


7 


was to be his home for over forty years, although 
for much of that time he saw precious little of it. 
In some way he found a home that first winter with 
an old trapper and trader named Kincaid. Here he 
at least learned to speak Spanish, the first of several 
languages of which he was to acquire speaking knowl¬ 
edge before, late in his life, he learned to read and 
write his own. 

Many biographers of Kit pretend that he was a full- 
fledged man doing a man’s work from his first arrival 
in the Southwest. Probabilities and reliable evidence 
indicate that the truth was far from this. To be sure 
most men in that place were young, but experience 
was all-essential and a man must prove himself before 
he could be accepted as the peer of such men as 
Robidoux, the Sublettes, St. Vrain, and Bent, who made 
their headquarters at Taos. 

When spring came his first thought was to turn 
back to Missouri and he actually joined a wagon 
train bound that way. At the crossing of the Arkan¬ 
sas he met a westbound caravan and threw in his lot 
with them. The next step was to sign on as teamster 
with an outfit bound for El Paso del Norte, now the 
American city of El Paso, then a Mexican trading 
post. It was a hard journey through a desolate land 
over a trail beset by Apaches and brigands both red 
and white. Some of the names along the way are 
impressive—Jornado del Muerto (Journey of the 
Dead), Laguna del Muerto (Lake of the Dead), Ojo 
del Muerto (Dead Man’s Spring). 

The next year was dotted with small happenings 


8 Boys y Own Book of Frontiersmen 

but all of them were important in the experience that 
they gave him. He was cook for Ewing Young, 
trader and captain of trappers, a year later to be 
Kit’s first leader. He once more tried to make his 
way east to his Missouri home and again turned back 
at the Arkansas. There was a brief trip with a Colonel 
Trammell to Chihuahua in Mexico as interpreter, 
which indicates that he had at least acquired a working 
knowledge of Spanish. 

It was not until the spring of 1829 that he had his 
first chance with the trappers, now as a man fully 
grown and accepted as a peer. Ewing Young, the 
man for whom he had cooked, was the leader. Half 
of the party was sent back to Taos from the Rio 
Salido and the others kept on westward for California, 
with Young at their head. Kit was one of those 
chosen for the western trip, a further indication that 
he was now a man in the mountain sense. It is 
probable that this was the second party of Americans 
to see the Grand Canon of the Colorado, the first 
having been Pattie’s two years earlier. 

The first California settlement that the little party 
reached was the mission of San Gabriel, near El 
Pueblo de Nuestra Senora La Reina de los Angeles 
(The Town of O'ur Lady the Queen of the Angels), 
or Los Angeles as we call it in these more prosaic 
days. They went north as far as the San Joaquin 
country in California where they fell in with a Hud¬ 
son’s Bay Company party under the command of 
Peter Skene Ogden for whom the town of Ogden, 
Utah, was named. 


Kit Carson 


9 


There were two conflicts with Indians in California. 
In one of them a party of twelve trappers consented 
to help the mission of San Jose to recover some run¬ 
away Indians, in the course of which the trappers led 
by Carson charged an Indian village and killed a third 
of the inhabitants. The other came at the end of a 
hundred-mile ride to recover some of the trappers’ 
horses that had been stolen by the Indians. Here 
again Kit was the leader of the punitive party. 

Their call at Los Angeles on the return trip was 
not so pleasant as the earlier visit had been. The 
trappers were exultant over the success of their trap¬ 
ping venture and had been long away from civilization. 
So turbulent were they that the Mexicans threatened 
them with arrest. Resistance and war seemed im¬ 
minent. Young ordered Carson to take three of the 
soberest and hit the trail for home. The others, 
fearing that they were to be left to the mercy of the 
Mexicans, fought their way out of the town and over¬ 
took the advance guard. 

After they had crossed the Colorado there were 
one or two threats of trouble with the Indians. On 
one occasion Kit and two or three others had been 
left in camp to guard the gear when a party of un¬ 
friendly Indians came in and sat around, sullen and 
dangerous. At a word from Kit the white men aimed 
a gun each at one of the Indians and ordered them 
to vamos. That was a Spanish word that every Indian 
in the Southwest understood. 

At another time the trappers charged an Apache 
camp at the mouth of the San Pedro and drove the 


10 Boys* Own Book of Frontiersmen 

Indians out, appropriating the horses. At night the 
rest of the Indians who had been on a hunt returned 
and were also sent flying, leaving still more horses in 
the hands of the whites. Now they had more horses 
than they wanted and the surplus were turned loose 
with the comforting reflection that they were all stolen 
from the Mexicans originally so it was no real hard¬ 
ship to the Indians to lose them. 

Many authorities insist that this trapping trip was 
one of the most profitable enterprises in which Kit 
was engaged and quote a price of twelve dollars a 
pound at Santa Fe for the furs. This is doubtful as 
Southern fur was not usually of the best quality and 
six dollars a pound was regarded as a top price for 
prime Northern fur. 

Ewing Young, who was Carson’s chief in this trip, 
was one of the notable men of the Old West. Five 
years later he nearly died on a trip across the desert 
from Salt Lake to Upper California. But he lived 
through that horror of thirst and hunger and made his 
way north to take a high part in the colonizing of 
Oregon. In his time it was said that there were three 
great forces in the Oregon country, the Hudson’s Bay 
Company, the Methodist Mission, and Ewing Young. 

The real trapping country of that day was in the 
Northwest, and it was also the most dangerous Indian 
country. Three tribes, the most warlike of all in the 
mountain region, claimed it—the Sioux, the Blackfeet, 
and the Crows—numerous, savage, and spoiling for 
a fight as they saw the white men pressing in. 

It was the trappers who opened this section, first 


Kit Carson 


11 


the French and then the American Fur Company 
operating from St. Louis and the Hudson’s Bay Com¬ 
pany that had worked down the coast from the North. 
The American companies took their furs out by pack 
horses to the Missouri River and then down to St. 
Louis by boat, and every mile of the way held the 
chance of a fight. 

It was in 1830 that Carson, fresh from his venture 
to California with Young, turned his attention to the 
North and enlisted with the Rocky Mountain Fur Com¬ 
pany. It was three hundred miles from Taos to the 
land of the Northern beaver, and Bent’s Fort on the 
Arkansas in Southeastern Colorado was the only post 
in Colorado. The winter before this trip Kit had 
attained the advanced age of twenty-one. He had 
won his spurs on the trip to California, but he was 
still a stripling compared to such men as Jim Bridger, 
Hugh Glass, and the Sublettes. 

But from the beginning he was one of the most in¬ 
dependent in a crowd never famed for subserviency 
or discipline. Orders and routine performance 
pleased him little, while the lure of a new section or 
a strange trail was irresistible. Edwin L. Sabin 
quotes the phrase of some unnamed historian: “Where- 
ever railroads now run and trails are followed, Kit 
Carson led the way; and his footprints are all along 
the route.” 

It is hard to follow the various wanderings of those 
early trapper years, and there is little point in attempt¬ 
ing it. His range was from Southern Colorado to 
the Salmon River in Idaho and well up into Montana. 


12 Boys 1 Own Book of Frontiersmen 

A characteristic exploit marked one of the earlier 
winters. A wandering party of Crows had stolen 
some of the trappers’ horses. Carson and twelve 
others followed the trail that the Indians had taken 
no pains to cover. In the middle of the night they 
stole up on the Indian camp and cut the ropes by 
which the horses were picketed and threw snow at 
them to start them away. So quietly was the work 
done that not even the dogs of the camp heard them. 

Every summer the trappers rendezvoused at some 
previously selected place to turn in their tale of furs, 
to gossip, rest, probably also to gamble and drink. 
The reaction from the hard, dangerous labors of the 
trapping season was apt to be hard in proportion. 
The Green River valley in Wyoming was one of the 
favorite spots for these meetings since it offered 
abundance of grass, water, and wood. Then, too, it 
was in comparatively neutral country so far as Indians 
were concerned. Sometimes as many as two or three 
hundred mountain men gathered here. 

To call the roll of all of Carson’s Indian fights 
would take a book in itself—and it would not all be 
pleasant reading. Not always, nor often, would the 
trappers wait for the Indians to begin the quarrel. 
Usually the mere sight of a Sioux or a Blackfoot was 
reason enough for shooting. Only once was Carson 
wounded. That was in a brief fight with the Black- 
feet early in 1833. 

The next year found him farther south in Colorado 
where he and two other trappers with three Delaware 
Indians enjoyed an all-day fight with a band of two 


Kit Carson 


13 


hundred Comanches. These Indians were skilled 
horsemen, but in that fight they had only bows and 
arrows against the deadly rifles of the defenders. The 
latter lay behind the dead bodies of their mules and 
stood off charge after charge led by the medicine men 
of the tribe. Finally the medicine men were all killed 
and the Indians quit. 

Most fights with the Indians ended in some such 
inconclusive fashion as that. Seldom was a definite 
victory scored by either side, although there were 
frequent cases of individual trappers or groups of 
three or four surrounded by savages or ambushed and 
wiped out. Usually news of such a happening would 
come back to their comrades long after in random 
tales from the Indians. All that would be surely 
known was that the trappers had been, and that they 
were no more. 

The year 1834 was a minor turning point in the 
career of Kit. The price of beaver had been declining 
and, although the end was not yet, the big companies 
were finding their operations less and less profitable. 
In the summer of that year Carson enlisted with 
Thomas McKay of the Hudson’s Bay Company for 
a trip down the Humboldt River in Northwestern 
Nevada. It was a grim, barren country, without 
water, and floored with potash, pumice, soda, and ash, 
a land of desolation and death. Carson pushed on 
after the rest of the party quit and crossed nearly to 
the mountains. On his return he reported that he 
found no beaver and therefore it was no land for 
white men. Half a century later this same region 


14 Boys* Own Book of Frontiersmen 

was dotted with gold camps and was rapidly becoming 
one of the richest mining regions of the world. But 
it remains to-day what it was in Carson’s time, a 
waterless land, sterile and hard. 

Kit and a few of his companions decided that they 
would separate from the McKay party and headed 
north for Fort Hall recently established on the Snake 
in Southern Idaho. It was a starvation trip and they 
were forced to open veins in the legs of their horses 
and mules and drink the blood. A band of friendly 
Snake Indians saved them by giving them a “fat horse” 
for food. Soon after their arrival at Fort Hall a 
wandering band of Sioux stole up in the early dawn and 
drove off the horses from the corral under the eyes 
of the guard. The trick was turned in such a matter- 
of-fact manner that the guard thought the Indians he 
saw were some of the friendlies attached to the fort 
and it was not until the stampede began that he realized 
that he had been tricked. 

The trails were beginning to tangle in the mountains 
now. The summer rendezvous of 1835 was marked 
by the presence of Marcus Whitman, the savior of 
Oregon for the United States, on his first trip to his 
chosen field. Joe Meek, another famous trapper, In¬ 
dian fighter, and Oregon pioneer, begins to figure 
occasionally in the chronicles. In 1836 there was an 
all-day fight with the Blackfeet at the Three Forks of 
the Missouri in which Meek took part. There was 
an artist at the fight, J. M. Stanley, and while the fight 
was on he made a sketch of Meek which served after¬ 
wards as a model for his painting “The Trapper’s 


Kit Carson 


IS 


Last Shot” which almost vies with “Washington 
Crossing the Delaware” for a place in American 
homes of the earlier days. 

In the same fight a trapper named Mansfield was 
pinned down by the body of his dead horse. Six Indians 
rushed to count their coup, which was the polite term 
for scalping. Carson shot one of them and the other 
mountain men rushed to aid him. Only two of the six 
ambitious young braves got back to cover in safety. 
The accounts do not specify, but it is safe to guess that 
more than one of the trappers followed the custom of 
the day and counted their coups on the bodies of the 
fallen redskins. 

Carson was near the end of his career as a trapper 
exclusively, although for several years he hunted the 
beaver in the intervals of other work. Some of his 
most exciting experiences centered around his post as 
hunter for Bent’s Fort in Colorado. He began this 
work in the summer of 1834. Bent’s Fort had been 
established by Bent and St. Vrain, old friends from 
Taos, nine years before. It was on the Arkansas in 
Southeastern Colorado, below the present town of La 
Junta and fourteen miles above the mouth of the 
Purgatoire—or the Picketwire as the mountain men 
called it. It was the only trading post in a great area, 
the outpost of white supremacy in all that part of 
Colorado. 

For many years it was the only post on the way to 
the Southwest till Santa Fe was reached, and the 
Mexican and Indian trade that passed through its 
gates was heavy. It is estimated that sometimes as 


16 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

many as twenty thousand Indians would visit it in a 
single fall. The end of the post was tragic and appro¬ 
priate. In 1852 Colonel Bent, weary of long wrangling 
with the United States Government which wished to 
buy it for an army post but was unwilling to meet 
Bent’s price, set fire to it with his own hands and 
burned it to the ground. 

At the post Carson’s job was varied. Primarily he 
was supposed to kill buffalo in order to provide fresh 
meat, but more than once he and his men rode out to 
answer a hurry call from a beleaguered wagon train 
bound for Santa Fe or heading back to Independence. 

One of these emergency calls came early the first 
fall at Bent’s Fort. Kit and some of his men met a 
wagon train from Missouri at the crossing of the 
Arkansas. The Kiowas were on the warpath and the 
mountain men were more than welcome as guards, 
but their procedure first surprised and then annoyed 
the teamsters. As they approached the debatable 
ground the trappers tied their horses to the rear bows 
of the wagon and crawled in out of sight. While the 
teamsters grumbled a war party appeared and charged 
the apparently unprotected wagoners. The mountain¬ 
eers fired from the rear of the wagons and then 
mounted their horses and chased the astonished braves 
over the horizon. 

Out of this fight Carson won a lieutenant, then a 
boy in charge of the cavvy. Oliver P. Kingman was 
a runaway boy of fifteen from Independence and was 
practically adopted by Carson. For twelve years he 
was Kit’s follower and friend and afterward a guide 


Kit Carson 


17 


and scout for many years. He lived to be a very old 
man. When he died in Denver in 1913 the days of 
his youth were already ancient history. 

About 1840 the first revolvers appeared in the 
Western country and Kit and several of his men sup¬ 
plied themselves with the new arm. Hitherto both 
rifles and pistols had been single-shot muzzle loaders, 
slow and awkward in reloading. At any rate it was 
in 1841 that Carson and his men had another argu¬ 
ment with their Indian friends of the old trail. At 
dawn the Indians attacked the wagon train that the 
white men were chaperoning. The mountaineers fired 
—and continued to fire without visible reloading. This 
was too much for the nerves of the Indians and they 
ran in wild disorder. It was after this fight that an 
Indian was reported to have complained: “White man 
shoot one time with rifle and six times with butcher 
knife.” 

In 1842 came the change to the third, and in some 
ways the least interesting, division of Carson’s life, 
that of what may be called a public character. Some 
time during the years of trapping and fighting he had 
married an Indian wife who died shortly before the 
date we have mentioned. In the year 1842 Kit returned 
to Missouri, to put his small daughter in school, the 
first return since he left it as a runaway boy. On the 
way up the Missouri River on a steamboat he fell in 
with John C. Fremont, then a young officer in the 
United States Army, bound on an exploring trip to the 
Rockies. At the request of Fremont the trapper joined 
the party. 


18 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

That first trip was a short and unimportant one, 
lasting only a few months. Its principal usefulness as 
far as Carson was concerned was to bring him to the 
attention of Fremont, a young, ambitious, and high- 
spirited engineer who bears to-day the name of The 
Pathfinder because of his explorations in the mountain 
region. It is no reflection on this officer to say that 
most of the country that he covered was known in 
some measure already to Carson and his trapper asso¬ 
ciates. Those men left few records and made no 
reports save in the tally of skins sold yearly. Fremont’s 
report of his travels was one of the earliest coherent 
accounts of the mountain country. 

The second expedition with Fremont in 1843-4 was 
the longest, fifty-five hundred miles from beginning 
to end. Carson’s place in the outfit is somewhat uncer¬ 
tain. Basil Lajeunesse and Thomas Fitzpatrick were 
the principal guides and Alexander Godey was the 
chief hunter. Carson seems to have brought his own 
party from Taos and Bent’s Fort and to have headed 
in some sense an independent unit. They divided in 
Colorado and one party under Fitzpatrick struck over 
the South Pass in Wyoming about where the Union 
Pacific Railroad now crosses the Continental Divide. 
The other party with Fremont and Carson crossed 
over Bridger’s Pass where the Overland Stage route 
from Denver to Salt Lake ran later. 

The two parties united on the other side and moved 
on to Great Salt Lake. A collapsible rubber boat had 
been brought along for the navigation of this inland 
sea, but the only use made of it was to reach a bar- 


Kit Carson 19 

ren island in the lake where Fremont, Carson, and 
one or two others spent a night. 

From Salt Lake the trail led northwest to Oregon. 
On the way Carson’s men tired of what was to them 
a wearisome and pointless trip and in the free-and- 
easy way of the mountains decided to quit and make 
their way back to Taos, but Carson stuck. 

Oregon was the official end of the expedition, but 
Fremont determined to see what lay to the south in 
the intermountain desert that Carson had encountered 
once before on his trip to the Humboldt Sink in 
Nevada. The going was too hard and dry and they 
turned west and found themselves confronting the 
wall of the Sierras in midwinter. They crossed, but 
they paid a heavy toll in mules and horses. The herd 
that had numbered sixty-seven on the eastern side was 
reduced to thirty-three when the mountains lay behind 
them. Their most westerly point in California was 
Sutter’s Fort where gold was discovered five years later 
that was to be the lodestone to draw the Argonauts 
of Forty-nine. 

The trip home was in part over ground that was 
familiar to Carson from his days with Ewing Young. 
They crossed the Mohave Desert and struck the old 
Spanish Trail to Santa Fe. On this trail two Mexicans 
came into camp with the familiar tale of Indians and 
stolen horses. Carson and Godey followed the In¬ 
dians all day and most of the night, attacked at dawn 
and drove them in rout, returning with the captured 
horses and two scalps. Their entry into their own 
camp was characteristic, riding at top speed, waving 


20 Boys' Own Book of Frontiersmen 

the scalplocks, and whooping like the Indians they 
had beaten. The expedition disbanded at Bent’s Fort, 
Carson returning to his home at Taos and Fremont 
heading east. 

The third expedition of Fremont which started in 
1845 was one in which Carson joined unwillingly. He 
had taken a ranch in the Cimarron Valley east of 
Taos, married a Mexican wife, and was inclined to 
think that his wandering days were over. But he had 
given his word to the Pathfinder and when the latter 
summoned him he joined the party at Bent’s Fort. 
The route this time was up the Arkansas past where 
Cripple Creek now stands and over the divide at Lead- 
ville. Thus for the fourth time Carson’s wandering 
feet led him over ground where later great gold strikes 
were to be made, but the days of gold were not quite 
yet. 

The distinguishing feature of this third expedition 
was that it ended not in discovery but in war. Ever 
since Texas had gained her independence ten years 
before and been joined to the United States, trouble 
had been growing with Mexico over our southern 
boundary. The time of final settlement was at hand. 
In addition, California was practically in revolt against 
the Mexican government. Many of the old Spanish 
families there had quietly resented the separation from 
Spain a quarter of a century earlier. The power of 
the Missions was still great and the few American 
settlers and traders who had drifted in had added fuel 
to this smoldering flame. 

Fremont and his men crossed the Great Basin west 


Kit Carson 


21 


of Salt Lake and landed in California early in 1846. 
They first turned south to near Monterey. The Mexi¬ 
cans ordered them out and by way of reply they built 
a fort and sat down to wait for a fight. But the fight 
was slow in coming and Fremont was none too sure 
that his orders permitted an aggressive war with a 
state with which we were still nominally on friendly 
terms. 

Accordingly after a period of footless waiting he 
turned north toward Oregon. Here he lost one of his 
most faithful companions of the trail, Basil Lajeun- 
esse. They were in camp in the Klamath Indian coun¬ 
try and had so little thought of danger that they had 
set no guards. The Indians attacked without warn¬ 
ing or provocation. Carson said afterwards that the 
first he knew of danger was when he heard the blows 
that killed Lajeunesse and two others sleeping by 
the fire. 

In Oregon word reached them that war had begun 
between Mexico and the United States, and Fremont 
was instructed to use his own judgment. That, of 
course, meant action, and he headed south for Cali¬ 
fornia. Fighting was mixed and mostly by small 
bands, which pleased the mountain men. It was the 
kind of fighting that they knew all about. Neither did 
they care much what was the cause, so long as there 
was fighting. 

But this unorganized kind of warfare could not 
long endure. The United States Navy was repre¬ 
sented on the coast by Commodore Stockton and he 
solved the problem of what to do with Carson and 


22 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

his kind by organizing them into the Navy Battalion 
of Mounted Riflemen, something unique in military 
history, if we except the famous Horse Marines of 
Captain Jinks. They saw blue water on the trip by 
boat to San Diego to join in the attack on Los 
Angeles. 

From this point Carson was ordered to Washing¬ 
ton with dispatches. In New Mexico he met Kearney 
whose capture of Santa Fe sealed the fate of Mexico 
in the near Southwest and he sent his dispatches on 
by another man and turned back to guide Kearney to 
California. There was plenty of action for the little 
gray-eyed mountain man. At the battle of San Pas- 
quale he was unhorsed in a charge and the dragoons 
rode over him, but without injuring him. 

When they were within thirty miles of San Diego 
they were surrounded by a superior force of Mexicans 
and held on a waterless hill. The force against them 
was too strong to permit them to cut their way through 
and Carson, Lieutenant Beale, and an unnamed In¬ 
dian volunteered to make their way through to San 
Diego. It was over a desert strewn with stones and 
dotted with cacti, literally a crawl on hands and knees 
that lasted for two miles across the valley after passing 
the sentries. Their shoes were in their belts when 
they started but when they finally dared to stand erect 
they found that the footwear had dropped along the 
course of that interminable crawl and the miles of 
desert cut their bare feet to ribbons. Once as they 
were passing the sentries one of the guards almost 
trod on them and stopped to light a cigarette within 


Kit Carson 23 

a few feet of where they lay flat. Carson said after¬ 
ward that he could hear Beale’s heart beat. 

Once past the guards they each took separate routes 
in order to increase the chance of getting through. 
All three of them arrived safe and Stockton sent 
prompt relief for the beleaguered Kearney. As a re¬ 
sult of their experience Carson was sick for days and 
Beale for nearly a year. No mention is made of the 
condition of the Indian. Presumably he ate three 
meals in one and then slept for twenty-four hours In¬ 
dian fashion, after which he was ready for whatever 
came next. 

There was more fighting for Carson in California, 
but it was not in this sort of thing that the little man 
shone. Early in 1847 he was given the chance to 
discover how his fame had grown as a result of Fre¬ 
mont’s reports of the skill and bravery of his scout 
and guide. Ordered to Washington with dispatches 
again, he made the whole trip this time with Lieuten¬ 
ant Beale. 

It was a long and slow trail from California to 
Washington. Horseback to St. Louis, two thousand 
miles, riding from February 25th to the middle of 
May, the shortest time, some claim, in which the trip 
had ever been made. From St. Louis to Washington 
then was only a ten-day journey, by boat to Pitts¬ 
burgh, by stage a hundred and twenty-five miles over 
the mountains to Cumberland, and then by the new 
railroad to the capital. 

Beale, his companion, was still weak from his exper- 


24 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

ience of months before and for the first twenty days 
of the trail he had to be helped on and off his horse. 

In Washington Carson was dismayed by his popu¬ 
larity. Every one wanted to see the man Fremont 
praised so highly and he was glad to take shelter in 
the Fremont home where he was a guest. President 
Polk gave him a commission as second lieutenant in 
the United States Army, an appointment which the 
Senate characteristically refused to confirm. 

Fortunately for Carson his stay in the East was 
of short duration and he was soon back in California 
catching smugglers in Tejon Pass north of Los An¬ 
geles. His companion on another Eastern trip, Lieu¬ 
tenant Brewerton, gives a good account of Carson’s 
care of himself at night. He never slept within range 
of the firelight or sat near it longer than was neces¬ 
sary in cooking. When he lay down, his saddle was 
so placed as to protect his head. His pistol lay close 
to his hand and his loaded rifle was always under his 
blanket. 

Near his old home at Taos a band of Indians ap¬ 
proached them in a threatening manner. The whites 
were trail-worn and short of ammunition. Carson 
knew the danger of hesitation. He promptly drew 
a line and told the Indians that the whites would fire 
on any one crossing it. No one crossed it. 

Again in Eastern Colorado a band of Kiowas came 
into camp. These were young warriors who had never 
seen Kit, although their fathers had known him to 
their cost. They pretended to smoke with the white 
men, but one of them said in Kiowa that when the 


Kit Carson 


25 


pipe passed the third time they would kill their hosts. 
Kit knew their speech and as the pipe started on the 
third round he said in their own tongue: U I suppose 
this is the last time round, is it? Now you will kill 
us.” The Indians were startled and Kit continued: 
“You red dogs! You thought you could murder us. 
Do you know who I am? I am Kit Carson! Take a 
good look at me before you die.” 

After a lecture that made them cringe he let them 
go with this stinging farewell: “Tell your chiefs that 
you have seen Kit Carson and that he let you live.” 

It is possible to pass rapidly over the later years 
of Carson’s life. The work that distinguished him 
was done. He was to live for another twenty years 
and to do much useful work, but it was work that for 
the most part he shared with other men. He and his 
friend, Lucien Maxwell, tried their luck as ranchmen 
on the Beaubien and Miranda grant in New Mexico, a 
tract of 1,700,000 acres commonly called the Maxwell 
Grant. Maxwell was the nephew and heir of Beau¬ 
bien, one of the original grantees. In 1852 he had 
an old-time beaver hunt with some of the old trappers 
around Taos. For most of them it was the last, a 
farewell performance of the frontier drama in which 
they had played so stirring a part. The day of the 
beaver was over and the stage was being set for the 
miner and the cattleman. 

But there was another interlude of war, war with 
Indians and the great Rebellion which had its echoes 
in the Southwest. Carson served for a time as In¬ 
dian Agent for the Utes. Probably no one of his time 


26 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

knew the Indians better or served them more faith¬ 
fully. It is probable that during this official term he 
also learned a little more of reading and writing than 
the mere signing of his name which had been his sole 
scholastic accomplishment most of his life. 

In the small-scale fighting that marked the effort 
of the Confederacy to gain control of this country 
he played a worthy part, and for this and his activity 
in Indian wars he was made a brevet brigadier general. 

But his proudest title of all was that of scout. 

The end of his last trail came in 1868 at Fort Lyon, 
Colorado, near the site of Bent’s Fort where he had 
made his headquarters so many years before. An old 
injury that he had received in falling with his horse 
on a rocky trail had pained him for a long time, grow¬ 
ing worse. It was this that caused his death. Dr. 
Tilton, an old army friend, and Scheurich, the hus¬ 
band of his favorite niece, were with him at the end. 
He had called for his old clay pipe and lay smoking 
when he felt the coming of the hemorrhage that he 
had been told would foretell the end. “I’m gone,” 
he said. “Good-by, doctor. Adios, compadre” and 
died in a few minutes. 

It is hard to sum up the worth of Kit Carson more 
than has already been done. He was the product of 
his time and of the needs of his day. Other men had 
in varying degree the qualities that he possessed of 
courage, readiness in emergency, endurance. Others, 
too, had his patience and keenness on the trail and 
his ability to read signs of man and animal. 

Few united all of these qualities in such high degree 


Kit Carson 


27 


and added to them that which can best be described as 
character or backbone. Men of every color and rank 
trusted Kit Carson and were never betrayed. What 
he said he would do, he did. In a land where discipline 
was unknown he disciplined himself and beat his rest¬ 
less spirit to a tempered fineness of control. At a time 
when men of his calling consulted first and most their 
own whims and desires he measured his responsibili¬ 
ties and bore them to the appointed end. Frontiers¬ 
man and mountain man as he was, there was in him 
something of the fortitude and unselfishness of the 
trained soldier. 

Fremont said of him: “With me, Carson and truth 
mean the same thing. He is always the same, gallant 
and disinterested.” And as Fremont saw him so did 
he appear to all the other men who met him in camp 
or on the trail. 


SAM HOUSTON 


THE MAKER OF TEXAS 

/ T S HE name of Sam Houston is linked with Texas, 
although his going there in the first place was 
largely an accident. His chances at birth would seem 
to have been better than those of most of the men 
in the long roll of American frontiersmen. His father 
was an officer in Morgan’s riflemen during the Revolu¬ 
tion, and after the end of that war he stayed in the 
army with the rank of major and the position of 
assistant inspector general of frontier forces. Young 
Houston was in his thirteenth year when his father 
died on a military tour in the Allegheny country. The 
family were living then at Timber Ridge Church, 
near Lexington, Virginia. It was a rough mountain 
country, heavily wooded. There was little farming 
land so there were no slaves in the neighborhood. 

His opportunities for an education seem to have 
been fair and all his life he was a steady reader. 
There is a story that in some way he found a transla¬ 
tion of Homer’s “Iliad” and was so fascinated that 
he demanded to be taught Greek and Latin so that he 
might read the classics in the original. The school¬ 
master refused, perhaps because he didn’t know them 
himself, and Houston declared that he would never 
28 


Sam Houston 


29 


study another lesson of any kind as long as he lived. 
That was the end of his formal schooling, but his 
education lasted all his life. 

After her husband’s death, his mother moved to 
Tennessee and made a home in Blount County near 
the Tennessee River. On the other side of the river 
were the Cherokees, and when his older brothers made 
him a clerk in a trader’s store, he deserted his job 
and ran away to live with the Indians. As he told 
his brothers, he would rather measure deer tracks than 
tape. His Indian life lasted till he was eighteen. He 
learned the language, took the dress, and was adopted 
by the chief, Oolooteka. The name that he received 
from the Cherokees was Coloneh—The Rover. 

This Indian experience set a mark on his thoughts 
and habits that he never lost. The War of 1812 
brought him back to civilization. He became a ser¬ 
geant, then ensign, and finally third lieutenant, but 
he saw no service against the British. 

The war with the Creeks gave him his first taste 
of fighting. He was with Jackson at Horseshoe Bend 
and was wounded by an arrow and then twice by 
bullets. The arrow was dangling from the wound it 
had made, held in the flesh by its barbed point. 
Houston called to a young lieutenant to pull it out. 
The lad tried twice, but his fear of paining Houston 
too much prevented him from succeeding. Then 
Houston held his sword over the other man’s head 
and threatened to bring it down if he didn’t get the 
arrow away on the third try. The arrow came out. 

Houston’s wounds were severe and he was a long 


30 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

time recovering. In fact the bullet wounds never 
fully healed. In the course of his wanderings for 
surgical treatment he visited Washington just after 
it was burned by the British, spent a winter at his old 
home in Virginia, and finally was sent to New Orleans 
to see a great surgeon there. The first part of his 
trip down the Mississippi was made in a skiff, but 
he finished in the first steamboat to make the voyage 
down the river. 

In spite of his wound, he stayed in the army until 
early in 1818, being in the office of the adjutant general 
of the Southern Division and later sub-agent to the 
Cherokees. A series of quarrels with John C. Calhoun, 
the secretary of war, led to his retirement. One of 
his offenses was to visit Washington with a delegation 
of Cherokees, wearing Indian garb. However, he 
stayed long enough to break up the slave trade from 
Florida through the Indian country. 

After he left the army, Houston turned to law, at 
that time the only sure road into politics. Candidates 
for the bar in that day studied their Blackstone in the 
office of another attorney. There was only one law 
school in the United States, in a small old building in 
Litchfield, Connecticut. His enemy Calhoun was a 
graduate of that institution. 

When Houston began his practice in Lebanon, Ten¬ 
nessee, he was totally without funds, having not even 
money enough to pay the postage on his letters. At 
that time postage was paid on receipt. It was not 
until some twenty years later that Rowland Hill, the 
British postmaster general, devised our present system 


Sam Houston 


31 


of prepaying by stamps. Isaac Golladay, storekeeper 
and postmaster in Lebanon, trusted him for clothing 
and other purchases, rented him a room for an office 
at twelve dollars a year, likewise on credit, and paid 
the postage on his letters. 

But if he lacked money, the young lawyer had some¬ 
thing that was more valuable in Tennessee in his time. 
That was the favor of Andrew Jackson. Old Hickory 
was fast coming into his great political power and he 
had marked and remembered the heroic conduct of 
his young lieutenant at Horseshoe Bend. This was 
the beginning of a friendship that never wavered on 
either side. 

For the first ten years after his admission to the 
bar the rise of Houston was one of the most rapid in 
the history of American politics. In 1819 he was 
made adjutant general of Tennessee with the rank of 
colonel. In 1821 he became major general of state 
militia. In 1823 he was elected to Congress where 
he served two terms, and in 1827 he was elected gov¬ 
ernor of Tennessee. So far had he traveled that he 
was already being talked of as presidential timber 
when Jackson should step aside. There is no doubt of 
the solid quality of his attainments and ability. 

To his own intellectual qualities and the powerful 
leverage of Jackson’s favor, he added a personal ec¬ 
centricity in dress that he had brought down from 
his Indian days and which took away nothing from 
his popularity, whatever it had done to him in the eyes 
of the punctilious Calhoun. Colonel Claiborne has 


32 Boys } Own Book of Frontiersmen 

left a picture of him on the day of his inauguration 
as governor, 

“He wore on that day ... a tall bell-crowned, 
medium-brimmed, shining black beaver hat, shining 
black patent-leather military stock, or cravat, incasing 
a standing collar, ruffled shirt, black satin vest, shining 
black silk pants gathered to the waistband with legs 
full . . . and a gorgeous red-ground, many-colored 
gown or Indian hunting shirt, fastened at the waist by 
a large red sash covered with fancy beadwork, with 
an immense silver buckle, embroidered silk stockings 
and pumps with large silver buckles.” 

At the end of his first term as governor he was 
renominated and the political future looked like fair 
sailing. Then came the mysterious domestic tragedy 
that put an end to his political hopes in Tennessee. In 
1829 he was married to Eliza Allen, the daughter of 
a man prominent in state affairs and wealthy as wealth 
was counted then. The marriage lasted three months 
and then his wife returned to her father’s home. She 
gave no reason nor did Houston, and the mystery has 
never been cleared. Houston promptly resigned the 
governorship and left the state. His wife secured a 
divorce on the ground of desertion and afterwards 
married a Dr. Douglass and passed out of history. 

While Houston was climbing to power his old 
friends the Cherokees had moved to unsettled terri¬ 
tory west of the Mississippi. His foster-father 
Oolooteka was still living in Arkansas and there 
Houston joined him and lived with the Indians as one 
of them for three years. But it was not in him to 


Sam Houston 


33 


drop out of sight entirely. His friends in Washington 
soon heard of him as a complaining witness against 
the Indian agents and contractors. There were counter¬ 
charges of fraud and misrepresentation against 
Houston. One of his detractors was William Stan- 
berry, a congressman from Ohio, who attacked Hous¬ 
ton on the floor of the House. Houston met and 
thrashed Stanberry on the street and not even the 
favor of Jackson could save him from a reprimand in 
Congress, although no other action was attempted. 

That was the time when the eyes of the near South¬ 
west were turning toward Texas. Mexico had thrown 
off the yoke of Spain in a war that lasted from 1810 
to 1821. Hardly had the power of Spain been broken 
than the revolutions began that have been the almost 
constant history of Mexico to this day, with the excep¬ 
tion of the forty-year administration of Porfirio Diaz 
that ended in 1910. Apparently the American settlers 
in Texas were doing their best to live under Mexican 
rule but were having difficulty in knowing to which 
of the several parties they owed allegiance. Iturbide, 
Victoria, Pedraza, Guerriro, Santa Anna—these are 
some of the names that flickered across the screen 
south of the Rio Grande in the early years of the south¬ 
ern republic. 

Of them all, Santa Anna was the one that lasted 
longest. At first a rebel against the tyranny of others, 
as soon as he held the reins of government he proved 
himself the most ruthless tyrant of the lot. As early 
as 1830, the Mexicans forbade further colonization 
from the North in Texas and sent Teran with an army 


34 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

of convicts to enforce the decree. The Texans threw 
in their lot with Santa Anna, then still a rebel. That 
was the first joining of the issue between North and 
South along the Rio Grande. 

Houston had his first sight of Texas soil late in 
1832, when he was sent by President Jackson to San 
Antonio to secure the return of Indians who had gone 
from the United States. He was apparently well re¬ 
ceived, having covered over a thousand miles on horse¬ 
back in two months. That done, and his report on its 
way to Washington, he returned to throw in his lot 
with the Texans. He had found his place at last. 
His political experience back in the States made him 
of great value in the councils of the Americans in 
Texas. He was a delegate to the convention that met 
at San Felipe early in 1833. He helped to draft the 
new constitution and was a member of the committee 
that drew up the Declaration of the People of Texas. 

But it was as a leader in the field that he proved his 
greatest value. The independence of Texas was won 
only after a long struggle. The fight at the Alamo is 
described in the chapter on Davy Crockett. That was 
after all only a heroic incident in the greater struggle. 
The rebellion was slow in brewing. For nearly three 
years after Houston arrived, the Texans did their best 
to live under Mexican rule, although some of the radi¬ 
cals were talking independence under their breath 
even then. 

The rights of the Americans rested primarily on a 
grant that Moses Austin, a Connecticut Yankee, had 
secured from the Mexican Government in 1820, to 


Sam Houston 


35 


establish an American colony there. Moses died on 
the way back to Washington, but his son Stephen car¬ 
ried on his father’s work and was one of the men with 
whom Houston was associated in the building of the 
new commonwealth. 

When the new constitution was drawn up in 1833 
it was not the original intention that Texas should be 
independent. It was still to be a part of the Mexican 
republic, but as a separate state and not as a part of 
the state of Coahuila as formerly. Incidentally, that 
new constitution had no provision for religious tolera¬ 
tion such as was to be found in the constitution of every 
American state. There was also a clause that no bank¬ 
ing establishment of any sort should exist in the 
territory. 

When the new constitution was adopted the next 
step was to carry it to Santa Anna at Mexico City. 
Then the colonists found themselves in the position of 
the mice who had met and decided to hang a bell on the 
cat. The decision was easy, but who was to attach the 
bell? A committee of three was appointed for this 
delicate task. Two of them suddenly found that it 
would be quite impossible for them to make the long 
journey. The devoted Stephen Austin undertook it 
alone and was rewarded by a two-year detention at the 
southern capital, most of the time in prison. When 
he returned his health was broken and he fought 
through the war of independence only to die as he 
saw his dream accomplished. 

While he was away, events in Texas began to move 
more rapidly. The most sincere opponents of war 


36 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

saw that it could not much longer be avoided and even 
some of the Mexicans resident in the territory joined 
the immigrants from the north. Volunteers began to 
organize for defense and drove off an attack on Gon¬ 
zales and captured Goliad, eighty-five miles southeast 
of San Antonio. Austin, just returned from his long 
stay in the south, marched with three hundred and 
fifty men to the capture of San Antonio. 

Houston was made commander-in-chief of East 
Texas with headquarters at Nacogdoches. To him 
Austin sent a call for aid and Houston used his last 
five dollars to send out a rider to rouse the country 
and joined Austin before San Antonio. Delay and 
desertions had worn the force down and there was 
much muttering. Austin was called on by the pro¬ 
visional government, lately formed, to go to Washing¬ 
ton as a commissioner to treat for aid, and Houston 
was summoned to the convention at San Felipe. The 
command at San Antonio fell to Edward Burleson. 
Still they loitered before the town. 

It was Colonel Benjamin R. Milam—“Old Ben 
Milam”—who finally roused the Americans to action. 
Convinced that the garrison was weaker than reports 
had led the leaders to believe, he rode out before the 
troops and shouted, “Who will go with old Ben 
Milam?” The attack began December 5, 1835, and 
lasted six days. Milam was killed as he rode into the 
town, but he had done his work. San Antonio was 
won. The Mexican commander, General Martin Per- 
fecto de Cos, gave his parole and his troops were 
allowed to march back across the Rio Grande. 


Sam Houston 


37 


The Texans seemed to feel that their work, too, 
was done. The force disbanded and most of the men 
went home, leaving only small garrisons at San An¬ 
tonio and Goliad, the sole guards of the new frontier. 
The way was being cleared for the tragedy of the 
Alamo. 

In the meantime the convention at San Felipe had 
completed the formation of a government, with Henry 
Smith as governor, James W. Robinson, lieutenant 
governor, and Houston as commander-in-chief. 
Houston was subject to the orders of both the gov¬ 
ernor and the council, and these two, after the not in¬ 
frequent fashion of ambitious and inexperienced poli¬ 
ticians, were soon at a deadlock. Some of the milder 
epithets that the governor applied to the council were 
“scoundrels,” “Judases,” and “parricides.” The latter 
retorted that the governor’s language was “low, black¬ 
guardly, and vindictive,” which seems to have been 
a fair enough characterization. While they quarreled 
Houston stood helpless between them. 

The council wanted to carry the war into the 
enemy’s country by attacking Matamoras on the Mex¬ 
ican side of the Rio Grande. Colonel Johnson and 
Colonel Fannin were assigned to the command. These 
worthies still further increased the confusion by asking 
for volunteers each on his own account and ignoring 
the other. Houston ordered Bowie to the supreme 
command of this force and that doughty fighter, wisely 
as it would seem, did nothing. 

In the meantime, word had come from San Antonio 
that volunteers for Matamoras had not only reduced 


38 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

the already small garrison there, but had also taken 
with them most of the military supplies available for 
defense. Houston answered this appeal by sending 
Bowie to San Antonio and the governor countered 
by sending Travis for the same post. These two for¬ 
tunately compromised, Bowie taking command of the 
volunteers, and Travis of the so-called regulars. Noth¬ 
ing more was heard of the vainglorious expedition 
across the Rio Grande. 

In the midst of all this confusion Houston found 
himself a commander-in-chief of doubtful powers and 
with little to command. His time of power was not 
yet come. Failing in his military efforts, he turned 
back to a field that he knew better and went east to 
treat with the Indians. Incidentally the Texas senate 
refused later to confirm the treaty that he made and 
troops were sent to expel the Cherokees by force. 

If there was little enough that was heroic in the 
conduct of'the politicians at this time there was plenty 
at the Alamo. On February 24th Travis wrote, “If 
this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself 
as long as possible and die like a soldier who never 
forgets what is due to his own honor and that of his 
country.” 

The words seem high-flown and pitched in the key 
of a more flowery day, but in a few days the young 
soldier made his boast good. The Declaration of 
Independence was adopted March 2d and the Alamo 
fell March 6th. A Mexican sergeant who took part 
in the attack said afterwards, “Our lifeless soldiers 
covered the ground . . . They were heaped inside the 


Sam Houston 


39 


fortress . . . The wounds were generally in the neck 
and shoulders, seldom below that.” The politicians of 
Texas might delay and bicker, but the men of Texas 
could shoot. 

News of the Alamo was the call to action for Hous¬ 
ton. He stayed only long enough to make a brief 
speech to the convention and left for Gonzales to take 
command in the field. His first order was to Fannin 
at Goliad to blow up the fortress and retire. Fannin 
had not yet got the new idea and delayed without 
reason other than a mere unwillingness to move. When 
he finally started it was too late. He was surrounded 
by Mexicans and surrendered. Three hundred and 
forty-four out of his three hundred and seventy-one 
men were shot after the surrender and their bodies 
burned. 

March 13th Houston started his retreat from Gon¬ 
zales eastward, sparring for time and reinforcements. 
He had less than four hundred men at the start, a 
force that had grown to fifteen hundred at the cross¬ 
ing of the Colorado and dwindled to eight hundred 
when he made his final stand at San Jacinto. It was 
a six weeks’ march without uniforms, pay, or sup¬ 
plies. The men furnished their own rifles and ammuni¬ 
tion and lived off the country. The commander’s cash 
amounted to two hundred dollars at the start. This 
was soon reduced by fifty loaned to the widow of a 
man who fell at the Alamo. There was panic all 
along the way and the troops gathered in settlers as 
they marched and herded them along with them. 

The proclamation that Houston issued to his troops 


40 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

reads like the curt declaration of a man who at least 
and at last knew his own mind. “There are none to 
aid us. There is here but a small force, and yet it is 
all that Texas has. . . . There are but few of us, 
and if we fall, the fate of Texas is sealed. For this 
reason, and until I feel able to meet the enemy in 
battle, I shall do nothing.” The members of the 
government seem to have been more concerned over 
the safety of their own skins than anything else. They 
fled from Washington on the Brazos to Harrisburg 
near the coast and later to Galveston. 

Santa Anna followed the Texans, spreading out his 
force to hold the country as he occupied it and tempting 
the retreating force to stand and fight. But Houston 
was not yet ready. He was in touch with the Mexi¬ 
cans at Benson’s Ford on the Colorado, but there was 
no battle. At San Felipe on the Brazos, Captain 
Mosely Baker refused to go farther and was left with 
his men to guard the crossing. A herd of cattle at 
night frightened him with thoughts of an attack and 
he burned the town and started a little retreat of his 
own. 

Captain Wiley Martin also wearied of retreating 
and was left to guard the crossing at Fort Bend. Evi¬ 
dently he forgot his orders, for he offered no resist¬ 
ance to the passage of Santa Anna. On March 29th 
Houston wrote, “On my arrival on the Brazos, had I 
consulted the wishes of all, I should have been like 
the ass between two stacks of hay. Many wished 
me to go below, others above. I consulted none. I 
held no councils of war. If I err, the blame is mine.” 


Sam Houston 


41 


Santa Anna was pushing on toward Harrisburg 
whither the government had fled, hoping to capture 
the president and council. On the day that he crossed 
the Brazos, Houston issued a proclamation to his 
troops: “You will now be told that the enemy have 
crossed the Brazos, and that Texas is conquered. Re¬ 
flect, reason with yourselves, and you cannot believe a 
part of it. The enemy have crossed the Brazos, but 
they are treading the soil on which they are to be 
conquered.” 

Santa Anna reached Harrisburg to find it deserted 
by the government and burned the town and pushed 
on a little way toward Galveston. Years before this 
had been Campeachy, the old pirate town of Lafitte, 
who had come to the aid of Houston’s idol, Jackson, 
at the battle of New Orleans. Then Santa Anna 
turned back and on April 20th came in sight of the 
Americans at San Jacinto. The Mexicans outnum¬ 
bered the Texans nearly two to one, nearly fifteen 
hundred against eight hundred. 

The Texans were in a bend of Buffalo Bayou. The 
Mexicans had a salt marsh at their backs. Both 
sides were in a bag. If either lost there was no room 
for retreat. They must fight it out where they stood. 
There was a stretch of prairie between. Late in the 
afternoon of that first day there was a small skirmish 
and one Texan was killed. That night Santa Anna 
threw up a slight barricade to protect his front and 
waited. 

At four o’clock on the afternoon of the 21st, the men 
of Texas advanced to the attack. The eight hundred 


42 Boys’ Ozun Book of Frontiersmen 

were about equally divided between infantry and cav¬ 
alry. Besides there were two six-pound cannon nick¬ 
named “The Twin Sisters” sent by friends in Cincin¬ 
nati. As the attack formed, Erastus Smith, known 
among the men as “Deaf” Smith, rode up shouting, 
“I have cut down Vince’s Bridge. Now fight for 
your lives.” This was the only bridge across the 
bayou and the only way out if they lost. There was 
to be no more retreating. 

The quarrel was soon over. The Texans rushed 
over the frail barricade shouting, “Remember the 
Alamo.” Half an hour saw the end of it. All but 
fifty of the fifteen hundred Mexicans were killed, 
wounded, or captured. The casualties on the Texas 
side were two killed and twenty-three wounded. The 
Mexican prisoners were well treated—far better than 
they expected after the treatment they had given Fan¬ 
nin and his men at Goliad. There was some rough 
horseplay and much rude fun poked at the disgruntled 
warriors. One feature was a parade with candles 
stolen from the captured baggage. 

Santa Anna swam the bayou and hid that night in 
a deserted house not far from the battlefield. The 
next day he was captured on foot headed for the 
Brazos. The disguise that this proud general had 
effected was a pair of red worsted slippers, linen 
trousers, blue cotton blouse, and leather cap. It is 
hard to guess what his masquerade was intended to 
represent. 

That was the end of the Texan war with Mexico. 
Santa Anna was released and the Mexican troops in 


Sam Houston 


43 


the country made the best of a speedy way back to 
their own soil. Santa Anna had his bad half hour 
with Houston when he sought to explain and justify 
his treatment of prisoners at Goliad and elsewhere. 
The best he could do was to plead the necessities of 
war, a dangerous argument considering that he was 
himself a prisoner. 

The city of Houston, ndmed for the victorious gen¬ 
eral, now stands about fifteen miles northwest of the 
spot where the battle was fought. 

The immediate result of this battle was to make 
Houston the popular idol of the new republic. He 
was elected president in the first balloting by such a 
majority that the others cannot be said to have been 
in the running at all. He promptly made one op¬ 
ponent, Austin, secretary of state, and the other, Smith, 
secretary of the treasury. 

It was no easy task to be the first president of Texas. 
The new government was $2,000,000 in debt and there 
was little income. The Indians were restless and 
Mexico was a constant menace in spite of the lesson 
Santa Anna had received at San Jacinto. The army 
was out of hand and muttering. Houston solved that 
problem by giving three fourths of the troops indefinite 
furloughs in the hope apparently that they would never 
return, and appointed Albert Sidney Johnston, after¬ 
wards a brave soldier in the Mexican war and for 
the Confederacy, to the command of the remainder. 
A lenient policy toward the Indian tribes averted trou¬ 
ble in that direction and gave Houston time to get 
down to the more serious and less spectacular business 


44 Boys* Own Book of Frontiersmen 

of running the government on the money that the gov¬ 
ernment had. 

The constitution forbade a president to succeed 
himself, and Mirabeau Buonoparte Lamar, a fire eater 
from Louisiana, was the next president after Houston. 
He undid most of the work that Houston had begun 
and brought the debt up to $7,500,000. One of his 
gestures was an expedition to capture Santa Fe, in 
New Mexico, then held by Mexico. All that this ac¬ 
complished was a further increase in the debt. 

Houston came back to the president’s chair in 1841, 
when Lamar reached the end of his term, and set him¬ 
self to the task of changing his republic into an Amer¬ 
ican state. Several efforts had been made to induce 
Congress to annex Texas, but without success. Wash¬ 
ington was a long way from the Brazos and the more 
populous Eastern states were cold to the idea. 

It was a simple trick that turned the tide Houston’s 
way. Seeing that the politicians in Washington could 
not be made to want the territory for its own sake, 
he began cultivating friendly relations with Great 
Britain. The Monroe Doctrine was still new enough 
to be uncertain of application in this case and the result 
was the passage of the resolution of annexation in 
1845. One early result of this step was war with 
Mexico over the southern boundary of the new state, 
but this quarrel is no part of the story of Houston. 

Another result was the reappearance of Houston in 
Washington, this time as senator from Texas. His 
career in the Senate, where he served two terms, was 
not one of great distinction. Mostly he was noted 


Sam Houston 


45 


for his peculiarities of dress. Occasionally he ap¬ 
peared in the Senate chamber wearing a brightly col¬ 
ored Mexican blanket, cut like a poncho, with a slit 
in the middle through which his head was thrust. He 
took small part in the debates that were almost con¬ 
stant at this stormy period, and passed hours in his 
seat whittling pine sticks. An observer of the old 
fighter at this time remarked afterwards that he used 
to wonder where Houston got the lumber that he de¬ 
stroyed in the long sessions. 

On the few occasions when he made his voice heard 
it was in opposition to the growing sentiment for South¬ 
ern secession and he voted consistently against every 
measure that pointed in that direction or that would 
tend to strengthen the power of slavery. This told 
against him at home, where secession was growing 
stronger every month, and when he returned to run 
for governor in 1857 he suffered the only defeat he 
ever experienced on Texas soil. Two years later he 
ran again and was elected. 

It was during this term that the question of seces¬ 
sion came to the final vote. The old man opposed 
it with all his might and after the ordinance had been 
passed by the Texas convention called for that pur¬ 
pose, he refused to take the oath of allegiance to the 
Confederate States of America. He had served the 
United States with all the loyalty that he had and 
he was too old to learn a new allegiance. 

Once afterwards he emerged from his obscurity to 
review a regiment that had been raised in the neigh¬ 
borhood to fight for the new flag. He had on his old 


46 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

battered hat that he had worn through his campaigns 
a quarter of a century before, a page out of Texan 
history that was so recent and yet so long past. He 
was received with cheers as he put the young soldiers, 
many of them the sons of men who had marched and 
fought with him, through the manual of arms, but 
their feet were on a road that was strange to him and 
he could not follow them. 

Two years later he died, three weeks after the sur¬ 
render at Vicksburg. He had lived to see his dream 
for an independent Texas come true and he had helped 
to bring that Texas into the Union. He had seen 
the menace of secession rise and flourish and he lived 
on to see it receive its first serious body blow. While 
,he lived he incarnated in himself much of the best of 
his time and section, and no one can read the history 
of the Southwest to-day without studying the life and 
achievements of Old Sam Houston. 


GEORGE ROGERS CLARK 


CONQUEROR OF THE ILLINOIS 

/ I V HE life of George Rogers Clark was one of 
almost unending war and struggle, with the 
Indians and the English, with the English, again with 
the Indians, and finally with the foes of poverty, bad 
habits, and bitter resentment of the neglect that he 
believed had been his portion. Out of all this medley 
of victory and defeat, exultation and despair, one feat 
stands out resplendent. That was the capture of the 
British posts in Illinois and Indiana during the Revolu¬ 
tion. Clark’s campaign, more than any other one fact, 
saved the great territory of the Middle West for the 
Americans when peace was made. 

Before he set his feet on the trail for this career 
of conquest Clark had served a long and hard ap¬ 
prenticeship in wilderness living and fighting. Born 
in Virginia in 1752, he became a surveyor. As in 
the case of Washington, this calling led easily into 
Indian fighting since much of the land where the work 
of the surveyor lay was already claimed by the Indians 
who saw in the man with the transit and chain a fore¬ 
runner of the settler. 

Just on the eve of the Revolution, Cornstalk, a 
brave and able chief of the Shawnees, gave battle to 
the whites in the campaign that received the name of 
47 


48 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

Lord Dunmore’s War. Lord Dunmore was then 
the royal governor of Virginia. Clark may easily have 
been one of the surveyors in the disputed country 
along the Ohio whom Boone was sent to warn before 
the fighting began. It is possible that he took part in 
the fight at Point Pleasant where Cornstalk was 
beaten in one of the bloodiest battles of our Indian 
history. 

Like Boone he had fallen in love with Kentucky 
and after a preliminary visit there in 1775 returned in 
1776 to make it his home. During the Indian fighting 
that lasted all through the Revolution he stood 
shoulder to shoulder with Boone, Kenton, and the 
others. His education was superior to that of most 
of the backwoodsmen and he soon became one of the 
recognized leaders. Before he had been in Kentucky 
six months he was chosen as one of the two delegates 
to represent the district, then a county of Virginia, in 
the Virginian legislature. It was Clark who served 
notice on Virginia that if Kentucky wasn’t worth 
fighting for she wasn’t worth having, a warning that 
led Virginia to send ammunition and other supplies to 
help the Kentuckians in their hard fight against the 
Shawnees. 

Clark soon realized that the real danger to Kentucky 
lay not in the Indians. These the colonists could meet 
and beat with anything like a fair chance. The prime 
peril was in the British posts that controlled the 
country from which the Indians came. In that day the 
country lying north of the Ohio and westward to the 
Mississippi was known vaguely as the Illinois. The 


49 


George Rogers Clark 

French had claimed it and had established posts at 
Vincennes in Indiana and Kaskaskia and Cahokia and 
elsewhere in Illinois. West of the Mississippi the 
Spanish still held and controlled that river to the 
mouth. Northward was Detroit, also in the hands 
of the British. 

The officer in command at Detroit was Hamilton, 
known along the border as the Hair Buyer because of 
the belief that he had a standing price for American 
scalps brought to him by his Indian allies. Whatever 
truth there may have been in this charge, it is certain 
that he was actively inciting the Indians against the 
men of the long rifles in Kentucky and on at least one 
occasion sent Canadian troops and officers from 
Detroit to join with the Indians. 

Men like Boone and Kenton were individual fighters 
whose vision traveled little beyond the borders of 
their own clearings. Clark was of larger caliber and 
thought in terms of commonwealths. He, almost 
alone among the Kentuckians, saw that there would be 
no peace along the Ohio nor safety for the seaboard 
as long as the British held the territory to the North¬ 
west. After the defeat of the French at Quebec in 
1763 the Illinois country was regarded as a part of 
Quebec province. Like the French, the English were 
determined to discourage settlement here as long as 
possible. Early reports to King George declared that 
it would never be of value except for the fur trade 
and therefore should be restricted perpetually to 
trappers and Indian traders. 


50 


Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

In 1763 King George III of England issued a 
proclamation declaring: 

“Our royal will and pleasure ... to reserve under 
our sovereignty, protection, and dominion, for the use 
of said Indians ... all the lands and territories lying 
to the westward of the sources of the rivers which 
fall into the sea from the West and Northwest. . . . 
And we do hereby strictly forbid, on pain of our dis¬ 
pleasure, all our loving subjects from making any 
purchases or settlements whatever, or taking posses¬ 
sion of any of the lands above reserved, without our 
special leave and license.” 

There were many things that King George did 
not know about his loving subjects overseas that he 
was presently to learn. One was that there were 
gathering in the passes of the Alleghenies and through 
the woods of Kentucky a host of stalwart sons and 
grandsons of England who cared as little for his royal 
will and pleasure as they did for his royal crown. 
And that was nothing at all. Their feet were on the 
westward way and it would have taken much more than 
proclamations and governors and licenses to stop 
them. 

One of the sturdiest of these was a tall, red-haired, 
black-eyed, brave, audacious, quick-tempered product 
of Virginia who bore the name of Clark. Patrick 
Henry, the orator, was now the governor of Virginia 
in the place that Lord Dunmore had lately held. Late 
in 1777 Clark went to him at Williamsburg, Virginia, 
traveling on foot all the way from Harrodsburg, 


George Rogers Clark 51 

Kentucky, with the request that he be allowed to lead a 
party against the British posts in Illinois. 

Virginia was in the throes of the Revolution and 
was able to give little more than permission. This 
Henry granted along with $6,000 in a much depreci¬ 
ated continental currency, somewhat better to be sure 
than the Russian rubles of our own time, but bearing 
little resemblance to the dollars of to-day. He also 
empowered Clark to raise a force of 350 riflemen, 
ostensibly for the defense of Kentucky. 

Jealousies were already arising among the colonies. 
Pennsylvania was particularly incensed at Virginia’s 
claims to this new territory, especially since most of 
it lay due west of her settlements. She would have 
nothing to do with a Virginia expedition. Men were 
scarce in Kentucky where the infant settlements were 
fighting for their own lives, and there were all too 
few riflemen in the settlements there for their own 
sore needs. 

However, Clark managed to raise a force of a 
hundred and fifty men and assembled them on the 
Ohio near where Louisville now stands. This was 
in June, 1778. His first objective was Kaskaskia in 
Illinois. This was one of the oldest French posts 
along the Mississippi. The transfer to the English 
had been accomplished with little change for the in¬ 
habitants. In fact, a French officer, Philippe de 
Rocheblave, was still in command and there were no 
troops except the militia improvised from among the 
French settlers. 

All the French posts in this region had grown up 


52 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

around the fur trade and at each place there was a 
smattering of small farmers and shopkeepers. French 
was the language spoken, even at Vincennes where 
there were English officers and a few regular soldiers 
from Detroit. 

Clark’s men were the frontiersmen of his day, armed 
with the long-barreled rifle and dressed in the buck¬ 
skin hunting shirt, the fringed leggings, moccasins, and 
usually coonskin caps. Each man carried a tomahawk 
and a scalping knife in addition to his rifle and was as 
skilled in the use of these savage weapons as the 
savages themselves. Their manners and their speech 
were as rough as their dress, but there never was a 
force better able to take care of themselves on the 
trail, in wilderness camp, or in a fight. Their only 
discipline lay in the courage, strong will, and ready 
wit of their commander. The greatest tribute that 
can be paid to Clark as a leader of men is in the bare 
fact that he held this intractable force together on a 
long march into the enemy’s country and brought 
them out through almost indescribable hardships with 
hardly the loss of a man. 

On the way west there was a brief stop just below 
Louisville where they built a blockhouse and planted 
corn on an island that is called Corn Island to this day. 
Here they left the weaklings and a few malcontents 
who objected to traveling so far for the “protection of 
Kentucky.” The first stage was down the Ohio and 
the normal route would have been up the Mississippi 
from the mouth of the Ohio, but word had come of 
French and Indian patrols on the Mississippi, so they 


George Rogers Clark 53 

landed at the old French post, Fort Massac, where 
Moundsville, Illinois, now stands. From there it was 
a hundred and twenty miles to Kaskaskia overland, but 
the frontiersmen traveled light as Indians and almost 
as fast. 

Soon after they left Fort Massac, Saunders, the 
guide, lost his way and for some hours he wandered 
about, casting right and left for the trail, completely 
at a loss. Clark finally flew into a rage so violent 
that at first he could scarcely speak. When he re¬ 
covered his voice he told the guide that he would kill 
him if he did not find the way by evening. The guide 
fell to his knees and begged for his life, but Clark 
insisted. In about two hours the badly frightened 
Saunders set them on the right road. 

There is a romantic story long current of Clark’s 
arrival at Kaskaskia. According to this a ball was in 
progress in the commandant’s house. Suddenly a tall 
rifleman appeared by the door with rifle butt resting on 
the floor and a sardonic smile on his face. This was 
Clark. When the French rushed to seize him, he 
waved a hand at the windows where the heads and 
rifle barrels of other riflemen appeared. The post 
had been taken while its defenders danced. 

It is a picturesque story and one that ought to be 
true. Unfortunately, the evidence that such students as 
Professor Thwaites have been able to gather indicates 
that it belongs in the same class as the cherry tree of 
Washington’s youth. The sober facts of record are 
that the Americans arrived near the town on the eve¬ 
ning of the Fourth of July. They captured a French 


54 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

farmhouse and forced one of the men to go with them 
as guide: The guards were asleep and the house of 
the commandant was dark. The capture was a matter 
of only a few minutes and was as simple as walking 
through the gates of the stockade. The little garrison 
awakened to find themselves in the hands of the 
Americans. 

The villagers were much disturbed until they learned 
that the object of the invaders was to free them from 
British tyranny. They knew little of tyranny of any 
kind in their lives, but the words pleased them and 
the fact that they were to be allowed to trade and 
trap and till their fields and dream in the sun pleased 
them more. 

De Rocheblave was not so easily handled. In fact, 
he became so violent in his language and so overbear¬ 
ing in manner that he was sent back to Virginia as a 
prisoner under guard and his negro slaves were con¬ 
fiscated. The record does not say anything about the 
freeing of these poor chattels. Freedom was still a 
word that could be stamped only on white skins. 

A few days after the capture of Kaskaskia a small 
party of horsemen with several French volunteers rode 
sixty miles across the prairie to the little French ham¬ 
let of Cahokia. This, too, was captured by the mere 
act of declaration. Thus the two chief French-English 
posts in Illinois were taken without striking a blow or 
firing a shot. 

Apparently it was easy sailing. Father Gibault, 
the good French priest at Kaskaskia, was so enamored 
of his new American friends that he volunteered to 


55 


George Rogers Clark 

carry the good news of deliverance to Vincennes. It 
was midsummer now, and an easy trip across the prairie 
deep in grass and flowers to that post, and the French 
there received the glad tidings with joy. A half 
dozen English soldiers who made up the garrison left 
for Detroit and the flag of the young nation was raised 
over this post also. Captain Leonard Helm of 
Clark’s force was sent to Vincennes to command the 
improvised French garrison. 

Simon Kenton, the great Indian fighter and friend 
of Boone, had accompanied Clark to Kaskaskia. He 
went with Gibault to Vincennes and after the sub¬ 
mission of the post went on alone through the heart 
of the Shawnee country with dispatches to the county 
lieutenant of Kentucky at Harrodsburg. 

There were apparently many days after the capture 
of the post when Clark wondered whether he had won 
a victory or edged his way into a heap of trouble. To 
begin with, his men, in true frontier fashion, became 
restless and discontented as soon as they saw the 
chance of immediate active fighting disappear and be¬ 
gan to mutter and agitate for a return to Kentucky. 
He met this by reenlisting about a hundred of the 
best for eight months more. 

Indians were a constant menace, especially from the 
north, and the French were doubtful of Clark’s ability 
to hold his ground against the red men if trouble came. 
To quiet them Clark talked largely, if somewhat 
vaguely, of his reserve garrison at the falls of the 
Ohio. As we have seen, the men left on Corn Island 


56 Boys* Own Book of Frontiersmen 

below the falls were only such as Clark had judged 
not fit to bring farther. 

To conciliate the Indians he held a long series of 
councils with the chiefs of the Pottawottamies, Win- 
nebagoes, Sacs, Foxes, Ojibways, Miamis, Iowas, 
Osages, all he could reach of the medley of tribes that 
roamed the Illinois country. Wherever he went the 
magic of his charm, his courage, the audacity and 
good nature of his bearing won him friends. The 
Indians liked and trusted him as soon as they knew 
him. So did the French. He extended his friendship 
to the Spaniards who held St. Louis and the governor 
Fernando de Leyba became his firm supporter. 

’ Disquieting rumors began to come from Vincennes. 
Hamilton was marching with a large force to retake 
the post. He was preparing to overrun Illinois and 
drive the Americans—the Long Knives as the Indians 
called them—into the Mississippi. Helm held Vin¬ 
cennes with a volunteer force of French settlers and 
one American soldier at his back. 

There was this much truth in the rumors. Hamilton 
was on his way from Detroit with -a mixed force of 
five hundred whites and Indians. He appeared before 
the stockade at Vincennes on October 17, 1778. The 
French deserted to their cabins and farms at his ap¬ 
proach and Helm and his single soldier held the fort 
against the invaders. Hamilton demanded the sur¬ 
render in due form. Helm and his army of one loaded 
a small cannon and, placing it in the gateway of the 
stockade, refused to yield unless they could be allowed 
to march out with the honors of war. Hamilton seems 


George Rogers Clark SI 

to have had his full share of a sense of humor and 
granted the rather cheeky demand. 

It was some time before Clark learned of the cap¬ 
ture and still longer before he discovered that Hamil¬ 
ton had held only some eighty or ninety men for the 
defense of Vincennes through the winter, sending the 
others back to Detroit. The winter shut down before 
he could perfect his plans for the attack on Kaskaskia, 
but rumors continued to reach Clark of the approach 
of the British. One such message was brought to him 
in the midst of a dance. The frightened habitants 
flocked into the stockade, but Clark ordered his men to 
get ready and refused to cease dancing until his own 
horse was saddled and brought around. This, like 
other scares, proved to be false. 

Finally reliable information reached him through 
one Vigo, native of Sardinia, now a subject of Spain 
and a merchant in St. Louis. This man had arrived at 
Vincennes after the surrender and was finally released 
by Hamilton on his promise to return direct to St. 
Louis without “doing harm to British interests,” on 
the way. He kept his pledge to the letter, but as soon 
as he reached St. Louis he set out again to Kaskaskia 
to tell Clark what he had seen at Vincennes. The 
friendship with the Spaniards was bearing early and 
useful fruit. 

But this situation of uncertainty and alarm was un¬ 
bearable. It was only a question of time when the 
threat would become a reality. Hamilton could not 
rest content at Vincennes while the riflemen held the 
east bank of the Mississippi and daily cemented their 


58 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

hold on the friendship of the Indians. Once the 
English lost the support of the savages their hold 
on the West was broken. Clark’s own inclination 
and that of his men was all for action. If they waited 
till spring the English might be the first in the field. 

The only alternative was to attack when attack was 
impossible. Two hundred and thirty miles lay be¬ 
tween Kaskaskia and Vincennes, much of it flat prairie 
country threaded by shallow rivers. In winter these 
rivers would be converted into lakes by the heavy 
rains and the prairie would be submerged by wide 
ponds. To march a body of troops across such 
country was impossible, and therefore that was what 
Clark proposed to do. 

He raised his force by volunteers to a hundred and 
seventy men and in February he was ready to go. 
More to conciliate his men than because he believed 
in it himself, he built a large flatboat or batteau called 
the Willing, mounting two small cannon, and sent it 
down the Mississippi and up the Ohio and the Wabash 
to cooperate in the attack on Vincennes. There was 
small chance that it would arrive in time, if at all, but 
the thought of those two tiny cannon was heartening 
to the men as they waded across Illinois. As a matter 
of fact the Willing reached Vincennes February 27th, 
three days after the surrender. 

Afterwards Clark wrote of the little expedition as 
they set out on their long march: “I would have bound 
myself seven years a slave to have had five hundred 
men.” He might as well have wished for five thou¬ 
sand. His hundred and seventy was the utmost that 


59 


George Rogers Clark 

he could scrape together, and it is doubtful that he 
could have handled a much larger force and driven 
them to the hard task that was before them. 

They left Kaskaskia on February 5th and although 
it rained almost constantly, the first part of their 
trip was on fairly high ground and the going was not 
too bad. To be sure they were wet and cold day and 
night and often it was difficult if not impossible to 
build fires when they camped. Still it was no worse 
than all of them had known on many a hunt or Indian 
campaign and their spirits were good. 

Twelve days’ march from Kaskaskia they reached 
the Drowned Lands of the Wabash. They were almost 
at their goal, but the hardest part of their journey was 
ahead of them. Both branches of the Wabash were 
in flood and the result was a torrent nearly five miles 
in width. Now it began to rain in earnest. They built 
canoes to carry their scanty luggage and the men 
waded through as best they might. 

Ten miles from Vincennes they reached the Em¬ 
barrass River. It was well named. It, too, was in 
flood. Here they spent a miserable night on a 
swampy, water-soaked hillock barely above the water. 
Fires were impossible and there was little food. In 
the morning they heard the sunrise gun at Vincennes, 
and many of them were convinced that that was as 
near as they were likely to come. Not so Clark. He 
turned down the west bank of the Embarrass to its 
junction with the main stream of the Wabash. More 
canoes were built to carry the weaker ones and they 
crossed and turned toward Vincennes. 


60 


Boys 9 Own Book of Frontiersmen 

Practically every step of the way from here on was 
under water and Clark’s leadership faced its severest 
test of the whole hard journey. They had been practi¬ 
cally without food for two days. Often the water was 
up to their necks and men fell and were picked up 
by the canoes. Clark was always in the lead, cheering 
his men, sometimes singing, rallying them with rough 
encouragement, asking them if they had come all that 
way to drown like rats in a cellar, reminding them 
of the victory and the comfort that awaited them at 
Vincennes. 

One day they covered only three miles and made 
another fireless and foodless camp on a half-drowned 
hillock. That night the temperature dropped and 
in the morning there was half an inch of ice on the 
water. Clark plunged in in the lead and broke a way 
for his men to follow. 

One story has it that he mounted a little drummer 
boy on the shoulders of a tall rifleman and ordered 
him to beat the drum. Since there is no mention of 
this infant hero in the account of the earlier stages of 
the march we may well believe that he belongs with 
the tale of the ball in the fort the night they took 
Kaskaskia. But the story is a good one and might 
have happened. At least, if Clark had had a drummer 
boy in his tiny army he would probably have put him 
to just such a good use. 

On one occasion Clark went ahead to test the depth 
of the water. He says in his memoirs: “I returned 
but slowly to the troops, giving myself time to think. 
On our arrival all ran to hear what was the report. 


61 


George Rogers Clark 

Every eye was fixed on me. I unfortunately spoke in a 
serious manner to one of the officers; the whole were 
alarmed without knowing what I said. I viewed their 
confusion for about one minute—whispered to those 
near to me to do as* I did; immediately I put some 
water in my hand, poured on powder, blackened my 
face, gave the warwhoop, and rushed into the water 
without saying a word. The party gazed and fell 
in silently, one after another, like a flock of sheep. I 
ordered those near me to begin a favorite song of 
theirs; it soon passed through the line, and the whole 
went on cheerfully.” This episode gives a picture of 
the wilderness leader at his best. 

The last day was the hardest of all. They were 
past the rivers, but between them and Vincennes lay 
the Horseshoe Plains, now a lake four miles wide. The 
men followed through, half drowned and often de¬ 
spairing, but constantly cheered on by their tall leader 
whom nothing seemed to dishearten. 

When they had passed the Horseshoe Plains they 
found themselves on a ridge of land that was dry 
and comfortable by comparison. Two miles away 
through the woods and across more shallow lakes and 
sloughs they could see Vincennes. They made camp 
and sought to dry themselves while they prepared for 
the attack. They had done the impossible and now 
nothing looked too difficult for them. 

A Frenchman out shooting ducks was picked up by 
scouts and told them that there had been no warning 
of their coming. Their informant was pressed into 
service as a messenger and given a letter to be read 


62 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

to the French habitants warning them to retire to 
their cabins and stay there during the attack. So im¬ 
pressed and overawed were the French to learn that 
the Long Knives were at hand that no one dared 
even to carry word to Hamilton at the fort that he 
was about to be attacked. 

At sunset of that day the Kentuckians marched 
through to the assault. So unprepared were the Eng¬ 
lish that even when the firing began Hamilton thought 
it was a party of drunken Indians returning from a 
hunt. He soon learned his error. 

The fort was in the regular frontier pattern of a 
square stockaded enclosure with a blockhouse at each 
corner. Small cannon were mounted in the block¬ 
houses, but the fire of the riflemen prevented the de¬ 
fenders from serving these pieces with much effect. 
The firing was continuous through the night and until 
nine the next morning. Then the Kentuckians drew 
off for breakfast—the first “regular” meal in six days. 

While they were regaling themselves, a scouting 
party of French and Indians in the English service 
appeared, returning from a raid on the American set¬ 
tlements. When the frontiersmen saw the scalps of 
their countrymen and the miserable prisoners intended 
for ransom or the torture stake, they forgot their 
breakfasts promptly and drove the raiders in con¬ 
fusion. Six of the Indians were tomahawked and 
thrown in the river in full view of the garrison. This 
summary treatment served to discourage the French 
volunteers in the stockade and they quit on the spot. 

There was desultory firing for two hours more, and 


George Rogers Clark 63 

then Hamilton asked for a three days’ truce to discuss 
terms. Clark’s reply was prompt and decisive: 

“Colonel Clark’s Compliments to Mr. Hamilton 
and begs leave to inform him that Col. Clark will not 
agree to any other Terms than that of Mr. Hamil¬ 
ton’s surendering himself and Garrison, Prisoners at 
Discretion. 

“If Mr. Hamilton is Desirous of a Conference with 
Col. Clark he will meet him at the Church with Capt. 
Helm.” 

This was the end of the English power in the West. 
Hamilton agreed to all of Clark’s terms and he and 
twenty-six others were sent to Virginia in irons. The 
others were paroled and allowed to return to Detroit. 
Hamilton and his principal officers lay in Virginia 
jails until October, 1780. Then they were released 
on parole and allowed to go to New York, at that 
time in British hands. After the Revolution he served 
for a year as governor of Quebec. He then became 
governor of Dominica, where he died in 1796. 

Vincennes had suffered many changes of name. The 
original, of course, was French. To the English it 
had been Fort Sackville. The colonials rechristened 
it Fort Patrick Henry. Fortunately, the original 
French name survived through all the shifting con¬ 
quests and that is the name it bears to-day. 

Clark was keen to follow up his advantage and 
strike at Detroit while his men were in the mood of 
victory, but a threatened Indian outbreak in Ohio 
prevented and the opportunity never came again. 

This was the high-water mark of Clark’s career. 


64 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

He had marched across Illinois under conditions that 
might well have balked the hardiest of frontier hunters 
traveling alone, and he had held his force together 
and brought them at the end into a hard and doubt¬ 
ful fight against a well-fed enemy. The numbers en¬ 
gaged give no measure of the stake for which they 
were fighting. Hamilton’s handful stood for the might 
of England fighting to keep the power of George III 
beyond the Alleghenies. Clark’s handful were only 
a few flecks of human foam thrown forward from 
the waves of colonial immigrants that were already 
breaking over the mountains. 

If he had failed, it is doubtful if the colonies could 
have won the successful peace with England that was 
soon to be theirs. As long as the English held the 
Illinois country they could afford to gamble with the 
colonists for more favorable terms. The colonists 
with British territory at their backs could hardly have 
pressed their demands with the assurance that they 
would win. Clark set out for the defense of Ken¬ 
tucky. What he won was the valley of the Mississippi. 

His later years were shadowed with misfortune and 
discontent. While Indian troubles threatened he re¬ 
mained the cool, audacious, determined fighter that 
Hamilton had faced at Vincennes. He beat the 
tribesmen at Chillicothe and on the Piqua. Then at 
the head of a thousand horsemen he swept through 
the villages on the Miami and put an end forever to 
the menace of the Shawnees. He and his men re¬ 
ceived large grants of land from Virginia, but most of 
it was wasted through faulty titles or the ignorance of 


65 


George Rogers Clark 

the backwoodsmen and their helplessness at the hands 
of thrifty land speculators who followed the settle¬ 
ments as the country opened. 

After the Revolution Thomas Jefferson toyed for 
a while with the thought of an overland expedition 
to the Pacific coast and seems to have corresponded 
with Clark on the subject. Nothing came of it at 
the time, but twenty years later Clark’s younger 
brother William was associated with Meriwether 
Lewis in the famous Lewis and Clark expedition that 
first showed the way to Oregon. 

In 1795 the French minister, the famous Citizen 
Genet, earned brief fame by his ill-starred efforts to 
raise support in America against the enemies of France. 
The record is badly mixed. There is reason to be¬ 
lieve that some of the American statesmen, Jefferson 
chief among them, gave him much encouragement. 
Clark fell under the spell of the golden-tongued 
Frenchman and accepted a commission as major gen¬ 
eral in the expedition that was planned to drive the 
Spanish out of Louisiana. 

The end of this left Clark still more embittered. 
Convinced that the young government that he had 
served so well had forgotten him, he retired to what 
was left of his land in Clarksville, near Corn Island, 
where he had made his first halt on his western way 
a generation before. His habits were those of a man 
who has lost hope, and to add to his troubles an old 
wound had rendered him a cripple for what was left 
of his life. In a moment of generosity the legislature 
of Virginia sent him a sword with a highly compli- 


66 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

mentary inscription. Clark broke it with his crutch 
and sent back the bitter message: 

“When Virginia needed a sword, I gave her one. 
She sends me now a toy. I want bread.” 

He died in 1818. This was the year that Illinois, 
the region that he had won for the colonists, was ad¬ 
mitted into the Union as a state. 


DANIEL BOONE 


WILDERNESS HUNTER 

r I s O understand Daniel Boone, the hero of Ken- 
-■* tucky, it is necessary to know something of the 
times in which he lived. When he was born in 1734, 
Georgia, the thirteenth colony, was only a year old. 
A year earlier had occurred in Virginia the birth of a 
baby who was destined to be the first President of the 
then undreamed United States. The English colonies 
in America were a narrow fringe along the seaboard. 
Behind them an unbroken wilderness stretched three 
thousand miles to the scattered Spanish settlements on 
the Pacific. The French held all of Canada and had 
dotted a handful of settlements down the valley of 
the Mississippi—St. Louis, Kaskaskia, Cahokia, Fort 
Crevecoeur, now Peoria. 

Within eight miles of where Boone was born in 
Pennsylvania now stands Reading, a large modern city. 
A hundred and ninety years ago Boone’s father’s 
farm was a frontier clearing, barely within the zone 
of safety from Indian attack. Undoubtedly Indians 
were a familiar sight to young Daniel from the begin¬ 
ning, and in the woods that crowded close around him 
he found a daily kindergarten of scouting and wood¬ 
craft. One biographer tells that when he was still a 
67 


68 Boys y Own Book of Frontiersmen 

small boy he and his mother were accustomed to spend 
their summers in a cabin some five or six miles from 
the homestead herding the cattle on the summer 
grazing grounds. Here was more woods experience 
for the future scout and hunter. 

Boone’s stock was of the best that has gone to the 
making of America. His father was Devonshire 
English, Squire Boone, Squire being a name and not 
a title. His mother was Welsh, bearing the good old 
name of Morgan. Both sides of the family were 
Quakers, brought to Pennsylvania by the fame of 
William Penn and his Quaker associates. 

As was the custom of the time, the father was an 
artisan as well as a farmer, being both a weaver and 
a blacksmith. All these were useful arts in a new 
country. Young Daniel seems to have had some 
training in both pursuits, particularly in that of the 
forge, although there is no indication that he worked 
at the trade except as was necessary in the rude back- 
woods life of the day. 

It was a time of large families. When Boone’s 
grandfather died at the age of seventy-eight he left 
seventy direct descendants, eight children, fifty-two 
grandchildren, and ten great-grandchildren. Boone 
had ten brothers and sisters. The wilderness seems to 
have been kind to its children, in spite of the hazards 
it held. Of this family of eleven, one was killed by 
Indians at thirty-six and another died at the early age 
of seventy-six. The others lived to ages ranging from 
eighty-three to ninety-one. 

The stay in Pennsylvania was a comparatively short 


Daniel Boone 


69 


one. Rumors reached them of a new country to the 
south that was a paradise of game and a land of rich, 
well-watered soil. It was not in the Boone blood to 
enjoy neighbors and when Daniel was seventeen the 
family moved to Yadkin County in North Carolina. 
This is in the northwestern part of the state on the 
eastern slope of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was 
then a virgin territory, filled with game, and although 
young Daniel was still a farmer he evidently spent as 
much time with the rifle as with the hoe. This was 
not the waste of effort that it might seem now for a 
large part of the food of the settlers came out of the 
wilderness, wild meat as it was called. 

Not only the food but much of the clothing of the 
early settlers came from the wild animals they hunted. 
Tradition has preserved for us the typical costume of 
the period, buckskin shirt and leggings, moccasins, and 
coonskin cap with the tail dangling down the wearer’s 
back. 

Even as a youth, Boone had local fame as a hunter 
and marksman, in a country where every one hunted 
and the high cost of ammunition made accuracy a 
necessity. That was the day when the American 
woodsman was acquiring skill with the rifle that in 
less than a generation was to prove so troublesome 
to the British regulars in the Revolution. German 
immigrants to Pennsylvania had brought with them the 
rifled gun, as distinct from the smoothbore then 
in general use. 

Boone’s rifle is still in existence (in the possession 
of Mark Woodmansee of Des Moines, Iowa). It is 


70 Boys } Own Book of Frontiersmen 

a cumbersome-looking weapon by modern standards, 
five feet three and a half inches long with a four-foot 
barrel. The modern sporting arm has usually a 
twenty-six-inch barrel. The weight of this gun is 
eleven pounds, three to three and a half pounds heavier 
than its modern brother. The caliber is small, shoot¬ 
ing a round ball running fifty-five to the pound, which 
is approximately a .44 caliber shooting a hundred and 
thirty grain bullet in modern practice. The modern 
American army rifle has a .30 caliber and uses a 150 
to 185 grain bullet. In caliber measurement .30 means 
thirty hundredths of an inch. The smoothbore of 
the day fired a large ball running not over ten or 
twelve to the pound. 

It is necessary to know something of the backwoods¬ 
man’s rifle for it was this and his axe that made his 
conquest of the wilderness a possibility. The axe as 
it was evolved by our forefathers was a light, thin- 
bladed instrument with a slightly curved helve, far 
easier to swing and more effective than the clumsy, 
straight-handled affair that had satisfied Europe for 
a few hundred years. Both gun and axe were made 
by country blacksmiths, often at the rudest of forges, 
but their peer was not to be found anywhere in the 
world in their day. 

Practically everything that the frontiersmen wore 
and used, as well as their food, was of their own 
making and growing. Here and there a cabin might 
contain a bit of furniture that had been brought from 
the Old Country, but there was little cargo space in 
the small sailing ships across the North Atlantic and 


Daniel Boone 


71 


little of that which came survived the long journey 
by Conestoga wagon or more often by packhorse into 
the mountain wilderness. 

As Boone grew to manhood, the Indian cloud along 
the western frontier darkened. English and French 
were closing for their final struggle in the New World 
and both sides were bringing savages into the quarrel 
with small scruple and too often little control. One of 
the key positions was Fort Duquesne where Pittsburgh 
now stands, where the Allegheny and the Mononga- 
hela unite to form the Ohio. The British claimed it, 
but the French held the post, mostly with Indians. 

General Braddock was sent from Virginia with 
a mixed force of British regulars and colonials to drive 
the intruders out. Braddock was brave but inexperi¬ 
enced in savage fighting. A young Virginia surveyor 
named George Washington, who was with him in 
command of the colonials, tried tactfully to show him 
the danger, but there was no time or disposition on 
the part of the British to learn. In consequence the 
force was marching in solid column along a narrow 
trail a few miles from Fort Duquesne when the Indian 
attack began. From both sides of the ravine of death, 
the unseen foe poured their fire. 

The British stood for a time and fired blindly, but 
they fell where they stood in unavailing courage. The 
colonials under Washington leaped into the woods and 
fought the Indians Indian fashion long enough to save 
a remnant of the force. Braddock died with his men. 

Boone was with the column but not as scout or 
fighting man. His place was as a wagoner at the rear 


72 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

and there is evidence that when the fight started he 
mounted one of his own horses and galloped out of 
danger, leaving the fighting to men who had enlisted 
for that purpose. 

But there was one great result that grew out of his 
brief and inglorious campaign with Braddock and the 
Virginians. It was then that he learned about Ken¬ 
tucky, the paradise of the hunter and trapper. One 
of his mates in the wagon train was John Finley, a 
hunter, Indian trader, peddler, and wanderer in gen¬ 
eral. Finley had been in Kentucky and as he told of 
the great herds of buffalo, the bands of elk, the wild 
turkeys that were so thick everywhere that they 
seemed like one great flock, the myriad numbers of 
game of every description, the born hunter’s mouth 
watered and his finger itched for the trigger. No 
wonder the British campaign in Western Pennsylvania 
ceased to interest him. 

Of course the men of Yadkin County knew some¬ 
thing of the land across the blue mountain wall to the 
westward. But the way there was hard and dan¬ 
gerous. Few white men had seen it, and those mostly 
wandering traders like Finley who had worked down 
the Ohio and a handful of French who had come up 
the river with the Indians. The way over the moun¬ 
tains was rough and unknown. 

And there was another reason. Kentucky was in a 
sense a neutral ground among the Indians. The 
Cherokees on the south claimed it as their own, but its 
northern borders lay too close to the hunting grounds 
of the powerful Shawnees for permanent occupation. 


Daniel Boone 


73 


So both northern and southern Indians hunted there 
and raided back and forth across it by turns. Both 
Cherokees and Shawnees distrusted the whites, and 
the distrust increased as they saw the westward move¬ 
ment begin with a thin trickle here and there. 
This distrust was stimulated in the case of the northern 
tribes by the efforts of the French and later of the 
English in the fighting of the Revolution. 

Soon after the defeat of Braddock the Cherokees 
rose and for a time swept the country in Eastern 
Tennessee and Western North Carolina. Mont¬ 
gomery, a British officer, was sent against them and 
was signally defeated. Boone had married and was 
the father of three children when these wars reached 
their height in 1759. In common with many other 
settlers in the Yadkin country he packed up his few 
household goods and moved to safer quarters in Vir¬ 
ginia, returning after a force of colonials had cleared 
the region of hostiles. 

He was now more than ever the hunter and wan¬ 
derer and less the peaceful farmer. Several times his 
hunts carried him over the mountains into Tennessee. 
Until a few years ago, there was still to be seen on a 
big beech tree on Boone’s Creek this rude inscription: 
“D. Boone cilled a bar on this tree in the year 1760.” 
Spelling was always a weak point with the great fron¬ 
tiersman. Once his travels carried him as far south 
as Florida and he nearly took up land where Pen¬ 
sacola now stands. His wife dissuaded him with the 
argument that the hunting was too poor in that swampy 
country to satisfy him long. 


74 


Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

Remembering Finley’s tales, he had even made one 
or two attempts to get into Kentucky, without, how¬ 
ever, penetrating far. It was not until 1768 that his 
determination became fixed to see the country to the 
westward. In the fall of that year his old comrade 
Finley appeared in the Yadkin valley, this time as a 
peddler. Boone seized the opportunity to talk with 
him further and Finley spent the winter in the Boone 
cabin making plans for the great hunt. 

It was May 1, 1769, when the party started. 
Besides Boone and Finley it included Boone’s brother- 
in-law, John Stuart, and James Holden, James 
Mooney, and William Cooley. Their way was through 
Cumberland Gap and thence by an Indian trail called 
the Warrior’s Path to a branch of the Kentucky River 
in what is now Estill County. 

From their first glimpse beyond the mountains the 
country more than fulfilled Finley’s statements. Game 
was everywhere in abundance. Buffalo trails were like 
cattle paths and at the salt licks they could usually 
count on finding them in bands of two or three hun¬ 
dred. Deer were so plentiful that no hunting was 
required to keep the party oversupplied with venison 
and deer hide for leggings and moccasins. They made 
camp in a secluded spot and decided to spend the 
winter. The hunting was usually done in couples for 
efficiency and safety and for some weeks they saw and 
heard nothing of Indians, although there were indica¬ 
tions now and again that small bands were in the 
vicinity. 

Boone and Stuart were hunting companions and 


Daniel Boone 


75 

one day they realized too late how false a basis their 
growing sense of security had. A wandering party 
of Shawnees appeared suddenly and pounced upon the 
two men before they had time to run or to fight. Not 
only were Boone and Stuart caught but they were 
forced to lead their captors to the camp where the 
other men were picked up. It was a small raiding 
party of Shawnees unwilling to burden themselves with 
prisoners on the return trip so they were content to 
take their victims’ horses and store of skins and warn 
them to leave the country. This the others were will¬ 
ing to do, but Boone and Stuart were aroused and 
intent on revenge. They followed the Indians and 
managed to recover four of the horses at night, but 
the skins were gone. 

Before they could rejoin the others they were cap¬ 
tured again by the Indians and this time their captors 
were determined to take them with them to the Scioto 
in Ohio for punishment. It was seven days before the 
two whites were able to give the Indians the slip, taking 
with them their guns and ammunition. Their com¬ 
panions had given them up for lost and were on their 
way across the mountains. Boone and Stuart over¬ 
took them as they met Squire Boone, Daniel’s brother, 
and a man named Neely, coming over with fresh sup¬ 
plies. But the rest had had enough. Even Finley, 
hardened Indian trader and fighter as he was, was 
willing to call it a day. Boone and Stuart still smarted 
under the losses at the hands of the Indians and were 
intent on a winter’s trapping, and Squire and Neely 
elected to stay with them. 


76 


Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

Boone was now fully launched on his Kentucky ad¬ 
venture. Probably never before or since in the history 
of the world has the issue between man and the wilder¬ 
ness been more clearly joined than in this new land 
beyond the Alleghenies. It was a rich country but a 
hard one. Added to the daily dangers of an unknown 
region without trails save those of animals was the 
constant menace of the Indian. The forest stretched 
dense and unbroken from the mountains to the Missis¬ 
sippi and beyond. In places underbrush and canebrake 
made passage impossible without cutting. The man 
who would carry his life through all the hazards of 
this tangle had need of all his hardihood and skill in 
woodcraft. Compared with the later scouts of the 
prairie, Boone and his contemporaries were giants 
among pygmies. 

That first winter in Kentucky was Stuart’s last. He 
failed to return from a hunting trip and the end of 
the story was not known for five years when his bones 
were found in a hollow tree and identified by his 
initials on a powder horn that lay beside them. It 
was supposed that he had been wounded by Indians and 
had crawled into the tree to hide, dying in his 
refuge. 

Neely soon wearied of this lonely life and made his 
way back home, leaving the two Boones. That first 
stretch in Kentucky was a two-year one for Daniel, 
frequently alone when Squire returned to the Yadkin 
for fresh supplies. Most of the time they lived in a 
permanent camp hidden away from Indians, but many 
nights were passed in thickets and canebrakes hiding 


Daniel Boone 77 

from bands of Shawnees or Cherokees that were 
almost constantly in the vicinity. 

Narrow escapes were so many and frequent that 
they soon ceased to thrill. On one occasion he jumped 
over a sixty-foot precipice into a river and swam across 
under water. At another time he came suddenly on 
an Indian sitting on a log over a stream, fishing. In 
telling of this afterward Boone said, “While I was 
looking at the fellow he tumbled into the river and I 
saw him no more.” Stewart Edward White, one of 
Boone’s biographers, inquires if the backwoodsman 
was “looking” over rifle sights. 

There were other white men in the country at this 
time. On one of his longer trips Boone went as far 
as the so-called Falls of the Ohio and found a fur-trade 
stockade where Louisville now stands. The French 
had come in from the west up the Ohio, but they never 
got far from the main water courses, preferring to 
let the Indians do the hunting for them. Other 
hunters came in from time to time over the mountains. 

One party kfiown as the Long Hunters, while camp¬ 
ing in what they thought was an empty wilderness, 
heard sounds of singing at a distance. Investigation 
showed them a white man lying on a deerskin. It 
was Daniel Boone amusing himself with the sound of 
his own voice in one of his brother’s absences in the 
settlements. He, too, was unaware of his neighbors. 
It is doubtful, though, if Boone had all the worst of it 
in these long absences of his brother over the moun¬ 
tains. It was a five-hundred-mile trip to the Yadkin 


78 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

and back, with danger for the lone traveler all the 
way till he was across the mountains. 

Some of the encounters with the Indians had a 
humorous side. At one time a party of Indians blun¬ 
dered into Boone and some of the white hunters when 
the latter were eating lunch. The Indians sat down 
at a little distance, both sides apparently waiting for 
an opening, but neither willing to make it. Presently 
Boone sauntered over and asked to see one of the 
Indian’s knives. He took it and pretended to swallow 
it, by a dexterous twist producing it from the bosom 
of his shirt and handing it back to the owner. The 
surprised Indian flung it away with a grunt of fear and 
the whole party fled in fright. 

The end of that first tour in Kentucky was disastrous. 
With their traps and their rifles the two brothers had 
accumulated a good store of furs and skins by the 
spring of 1771 and were on their way home. In 
Powell’s Valley, almost within sight of safety, they 
were captured again by Indians and robbed for the 
second time. This was the last straw and they arrived 
home poorer than when they left two years before. 

On the basis of that experience Kentucky didn’t look 
like a profitable venture to the men of the Yadkin and 
even Boone might have been a little discouraged. In 
fact for two years he spent most of his time at home, 
although there were two trips across the mountains 
in one of which he selected a site for a home. But 
other men were looking beyond that blue mountain 
wall. A settlement had been established in the 
Watauga country in Eastern Tennessee and the 


Daniel Boone 


79 


Watauga Association had been formed, having the 
first written articles of government to be adopted west 
of the Alleghenies. The tide of settlement was moving 
westward and Boone began to find more listeners for 
his stories of Kentucky. 

It was in September, 1773, that he started on his 
most serious invasion of Kentucky. This time he was 
the head of a large caravan that moved through Cum¬ 
berland Gap. There were five families beside his own 
and there were now eight children in the Boone house¬ 
hold. Powell’s Valley was again a place of ill omen. 
The party stopped here to wait for another train that 
was coming from the Valley of Virginia and Boone 
sent his son James and a couple of other men to get 
extra supplies at a settlement called Russells on the 
Clinch River. It was an easy and usually safe trip, 
but they lost their way on the return and went into 
camp only about three miles from the main body. A 
party of Shawnees on their way north from a raid in 
the Cherokee country attacked them at dawn and killed 
young Boone. 

When the news reached the westbound party all of 
them were for turning back except the indomitable 
Boone. His motto then and always was “Press on.” 
The arguments of the others were too strong, how¬ 
ever, and he was compelled to spend the winter with 
his family in an abandoned cabin in Powell’s Valley. 
It was probably fortunate for the little party that the 
counsels of caution had prevailed. The Indians were 
restless and on the verge of war. The Shawnees had 


80 Boys 1 Own Book of Frontiersmen 

closed the Ohio and settlers and surveyors in the coun¬ 
try were in danger. 

Lord Dunmore, then the royal governor of Vir¬ 
ginia, sent a messenger to Boone to ask if he would 
take a warning to these scattered parties. Boone ac¬ 
cepted the task, taking with him a man named Stoner. 
These two covered eight hundred miles in two months, 
all of the time in hostile country. The war ended with 
the defeat of the famous war chief Cornstalk at Point 
Pleasant in October, one of the bitterest battles written 
on the long record of our Indian wars. 

Now comes a new phase in the career of Boone, one 
that promised him wealth and power and in the end 
brought him only heartbreak and disappointment. His 
fame as a hunter and guide had spread, and when 
Richard Henderson dreamed his dream of an inde¬ 
pendent colony beyond the Alleghenies it was natural 
that he should turn to Boone as his pathfinder. The 
land was claimed by Virginia on the basis of the orig¬ 
inal grants from the British crown and North Carolina 
too had a claim for part of it on the same basis. Most 
of the original grants were vague and purported to 
give title to all the land between certain points on the 
coast westward to the Pacific. 

In view of these broad conditions, and since neither 
Virginia nor North Carolina had done anything to 
make good their claims, there was some show of reason 
in Henderson’s argument that the only good title 
rested on Indian treaties. He proceeded with the for¬ 
mation of his company, the Transylvania Company, 
and entered into a treaty with the Cherokees, the 


Daniel Boone 


81 


nominal native owners of the country, at Sycamore 
Shoals. One of the chiefs made a remark to Boone at 
the time that he was to remember more than once in the 
years that were coming. “Brother, it is a fine land we 
sell to you, but I fear you will find it hard to hold.” 
This was in 1775, and Indian wars were almost con¬ 
tinuous from then until the close of the Revolution 
in 1783. 

Boone’s first task was to build a trail from the 
Valley of Virginia to Central Kentucky. This was the 
task of which he was proudest in later years. It was 
a hard country through which the Wilderness Road 
ran, but over it was to pass one of the greatest 
migrations in the history of inland America. There 
were thirty “guns” in the road company and it was a 
joint task for axes and guns. All travel was horseback 
in those early days. In fact it was not until 1796 that 
a wheel passed over this great highway, although thou¬ 
sands of settlers had used it by that time. 

Their destination was the junction of Otter Creek 
and the Kentucky River and they were within fifteen 
miles of their goal when they were attacked by In¬ 
dians. This was a surprise, as it was supposed that 
treaties with the Cherokees, the Shawnees, and the Six 
.Nations had insured safety. The whites were soon to 
learn that safety could be bought only with complete 
victory. 

This welcome to their Promised Land was discour¬ 
aging to many of the new settlers, used though they 
were to hard conditions of living, and only Boone’s 
insistence prevented a return to Carolina. They were 


82 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

two hundred miles from the nearest white settlements 
in the Watauga country and the prospect was any¬ 
thing but pleasing. 

Boone, however, held firm and set about the building 
of the stockade that was to be the nucleus of Boones- 
borough at the junction of Otter Creek and thei Ken¬ 
tucky River. No trace of this first settlement in Ken¬ 
tucky remains to-day. 

Boone’s employer, Henderson, soon followed him 
and began the forming of the government of Transyl¬ 
vania, as the new colony was to be called. It was short¬ 
lived and can be passed over quickly. Both Virginia 
and North Carolina claimed the territory on the basis 
of early grants from the crown and the Revolution 
put a speedy end to the hopes of another proprietary 
colony, but the legislative assembly called by Hender¬ 
son was the first west of the Alleghenies. Late in 
1776, Kentucky became a county of Virginia and Hen¬ 
derson received a grant of two hundred thousand acres 
of land in consideration of relinquishing his claim. 
Later North Carolina made a similar grant. 

That same fall saw the beginning of the Indian 
troubles that were to last till the end of the Revolu¬ 
tion. The settlers had brought on their families and 
three girls, Jemima Boone, a daughter of the leader, 
and Fanny and Elizabeth Callaway, were captured by 
Indians while canoeing on the Kentucky. They were 
not missed for several hours and when Boone and six 
others started in pursuit they found that the quick¬ 
witted girls had left a plain trail, here a deep foot¬ 
print in soft ground, there a bit of cloth on a bush. 


Daniel Boone 


83 


The pursuers could make only five miles before dark¬ 
ness shut down the first day, but the second day they 
made thirty and early in the morning of the third day 
they reached the Indian camp. The captors, thinking 
they had outrun pursuit, were sleeping without guards. 
The whites rushed them and rescued the girls without 
a fight. Incidentally all three of the girls later married 
members of the rescue party. 

In the long Indian war only isolated cabins were 
at first attacked. Virginia, more than busy with her 
part in the Revolution, paid no attention to her new 
county till George Rogers Clark served notice on the 
colonial legislature at Williamsburg that if Kentucky 
wasn’t worth saving she wasn’t worth having. Then 
the mother colony sent powder and lead under a guard 
commanded by Clark and John Gabriel Jones. It 
was on this trip that they met Simon Kenton, later 
to play a brave part with Boone. He had left Vir¬ 
ginia at the age of sixteen because of a duel over a 
love affair and now at twenty-one was already famous 
along the border as a hunter, guide, and Indian 
fighter. Jones foolishly blundered into an ambush and 
was killed with another man and two of his men were 
taken for torture, but Clark saved the powder. 

The northern tribes now abandoned all pretense at 
neutrality, urged on by Hamilton, the British governor 
at Detroit, who offered rich rewards for attacks on 
the colonists. In 1777 Harrodstown was besieged 
three times and Boonesborough twice. It was dan¬ 
gerous to go outside the stockades and hunters led by 
Boone and Kenton stole out at night to kill the food 


84 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

for the besieged. Kenton, especially, seems to have 
spent most of his time prowling through the woods, 
hunting game and Indians impartially and sleeping in 
hollow logs and canebrakes. It was a time when white 
men wore their scalps only at the price of courage and 
supreme woodcraft. Men like Kenton matched the 
Indian at his own game and used the scalping knife 
almost as freely as their red enemies. 

In one of the attacks on Boonesborough, Kenton 
saved Boone’s life. The defenders had been drawn 
outside the stockade by a ruse and attacked from 
ambush. Boone was wounded and about to be killed 
when Kenton shot his Indian opponent and carried 
Boone back to safety. 

One of Boone’s great exploits was performed in 
1778. Early in the year he and a party of thirty men 
were captured at the Blue Licks where they were 
boiling salt. Boone led his captors to their camp in 
order to prevent an attack on the settlement, and the 
Indians, satisfied with their catch, particularly since 
it included Boone whom they all knew, set out for 
their towns on the Little Miami, a few miles from the 
present town of Xenia, Ohio. Some of the Indians 
urged the torture stake and others were for Detroit 
and the reward that Hamilton offered for captives. 

Detroit won by a perilously narrow margin. But 
Boone was not for either. He was taken to Detroit, 
but Hamilton’s offer of a hundred pounds sterling for 
him was refused and he was adopted into the tribe as 
a son of Black Fish, one of the Shawnee chiefs. The 
ceremony of adoption was a painful one, including 


Daniel Boone 


85 


plucking out of all the hair except the scalplock, but 
it is not certain how far Boone was forced to go. It 
is certain that he received an Indian name, Big Turtle, 
and became at once one of their most useful hunters. 
His ammunition was counted carefully at the beginning 
of each hunt and again at the close and a tally made 
of the game. 

There was no intention of letting this powerful white 
man travel back to his fellows. Boone knew a trick 
worth two of that. He split his bullets and used light 
charges of powder for short ranges, hiding the am¬ 
munition thus saved. 

He was held by the Indians for nearly five months, 
hearing constant rumors of an impending attack on 
the whites. Finally after an absence of some ten days 
at a salt lick on the Scioto he returned to find the vil¬ 
lage crowded with strange warriors and learned that 
the biggest expedition of all was being planned 
against Boonesborough. It was now or never. He 
had a day to prepare, to overhaul his rifle and toma¬ 
hawk. The next day he secured permission to go on 
a hunt and took a direct line for the Ohio, traveling 
day and night. Indians were all about and it was 
unsafe to build a fire or to shoot game. It was not 
until the third day that he touched any other food 
than the parched corn that he carried in his hunting 
pouch. 

It was a trip that held a hazard every hour. Not 
only must he travel at top speed, but it was necessary 
to conceal his trail, doubling on his tracks, walking 
backwards, wading streams, using every artifice that 


86 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

woodsmen know. In the five days that his return 
occupied, he covered a hundred and sixty miles. 

In Boonesborough he found that his family had 
given him up for dead and had gone back across the 
mountains, all except his daughter Jemima and his 
brother Squire. Other settlers had become discour¬ 
aged and gone away until only a hundred were left in 
the settlement, of whom one third were fighting men, 
even by the liberal interpretation of that day when 
any man who could level a rifle was a fighter. 

The story of those days is one of almost constant 
fighting which spared neither sex nor any age. John 
Merrill’s cabin was attacked at night by seven Indians. 
He opened the door at their knock and fell wounded 
across the threshold. His wife dragged him inside 
and barred the door. When the Indians tried to break 
it down, she killed or badly wounded four. Two that 
tried to come down the chimney fell in the coals half 
suffocated by the smoke of a feather bed that she 
threw on the fire. These she promptly dispatched with 
an axe. Then she turned to the half-broken door 
where the sole survivor was trying to thrust his body 
through and gashed his face with her trusty axe. That 
ended the fight. 

The attack that was preparing when Boone escaped 
from the Indian village was delayed and reinforce¬ 
ments came from Virginia to man the stockades. In 
the meantime Clark had swept across Illinois and into 
Indiana, capturing the old French posts of Kaskaskia, 
Cahokia, and Vincennes, now held by the English. 
Boone hoped that this would take the heart out of the 


Daniel Boone 


87 


Indian warriors, but another fugitive from the Shaw- 
nees brought word that Hamilton had ordered an 
attack in force. 

Boone’s answer was to take a band of nineteen 
picked men and march a hundred and fifty miles into 
the enemy country. They defeated a band of Indians 
nearly double their number and landed back at Boones- 
borough two hours before the force that Hamilton 
had sent appeared on the opposite bank of the river. 
This was the supreme effort of the Shawnees. There 
were a hundred and forty Indians in the party and a 
company of Canadians under the command of Lieuten¬ 
ant de Quindre from Detroit. All the great war 
chiefs were there, Black Fish of the Shawnees, Boone’s 
adopted father, Black Bird of the Chippewas, Black 
Hoof who had fought against Braddock, and Molunta, 
the bitter foe of all Kentuckians. 

There were only fifty fighting men in the stockade 
to oppose this force, but de Quindre parleyed, offering 
them safe conduct to the Indian towns if they would 
surrender. Boone sparred for two days and then 
refused. De Quindre then offered to withdraw if the 
settlers would swear allegiance to Great Britain. At 
the conference over this proposal the Indians attempted 
treachery and the whites broke and ran for the stock¬ 
ade. The siege that began lasted for ten days, a record 
in border warfare. As a usual rule the Indians soon 
wearied of the boredom of siege tactics and gave up 
in disgust if the defenders showed no signs of coming 
out for open fighting. 

This time they not only stuck but they drove a 


88 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

tunnel from the river bank nearly under the stockade. 
So close were they that the men inside could hear the 
click of shovel and pick. One historian tells of the 
talk that went back and forth between the Indians 
and whites. The guards on the watch towers would 
shout down to the Indians digging below in the shelter 
of the river bank: “What are you red rascals doing 
down there?” 

The Indians would shout back: “Digging. Blow 
you all to the devil soon. What you do?” 

The final phrase of this light repartee would be: 
“Oh, we are digging to meet you and intend to bury 
five hundred of you.” 

Once one of the cabins against the stockade was 
fired by blazing arrows. Although it was swept by 
bullets a young man climbed up in full view and stood 
throwing pails of water that were passed to him on the 
flames until the fire was out. There is no record of 
his name. 

Finally came the last night that was almost like the 
last night at Lucknow. They knew the diggers in the 
tunnel were almost through and the guards stood to 
their guns in the darkness, waiting. It was raining 
heavily and they could hear no sound above the rush 
of rain and wind. There was no attack and when day 
broke no Indians were to be seen. Presently a few 
men ventured out and learned that the Indians had 
really withdrawn, a fact soon confirmed by Kenton 
who had been on a solitary raid behind the Indian 
lines stealing horses and scalps. The rain in the night 


Daniel Boone 89 

had caved in the roof of the tunnel and the Indians 
had quit in disgust. 

There was a ridiculous sequel to the siege in the 
shape of the trial of Boone on charges preferred by 
Richard Callaway that he had weakened the garrison 
by betraying his companions at the Blue Lick and by 
the later expedition into the Indian country. The out¬ 
come was the complete acquittal of Boone and a com¬ 
mission as major for him. 

Following the great siege, Boone seems to have 
taken a vacation of a year with his family on the 
Yadkin. Meanwhile the war was still going on, mostly 
by small bands. Soon after his return to Kentucky 
Boone had a characteristic encounter with two Indians, 
killing one of them and wounding the other with a 
single shot. One of his companions on his return to 
Boonesborough is said to have been Abraham Lincoln, 
the grandfather of the President. 

Word came about that time of an attack on the 
small post at Bryant’s Station. Three relief parties 
under the command of Boone, Stephen Trigg, and 
Levi Todd, all daring and experienced fighters, started 
in pursuit. At Blue Lick they found signs that they 
read as invitations to an attack. They counseled cau¬ 
tion, but Hugh McGary, a fiery border leader, dashed 
into the stream shouting to the others to follow him. 
They rushed in pell-mell at his heels. At the other 
bank the Indians in ambush poured in a heavy fire 
and closed with them with clubbed rifles and toma¬ 
hawks. Israel, Boone’s oldest living son, was killed 
and the father was wounded in trying to carry the 


90 Boys* Own Book of Frontiersmen 

body of his son from the field. Seventy of the Ken¬ 
tuckians were killed, all but seven of their officer^ 
among the number, almost half the total force. 

That was the biggest defeat the whites had suffered, 
but the war was nearly over. That fall George Rogers 
Clark took a thousand mounted riflemen and swept 
with fire and bullet through the Indian towns on the 
Little Miami, breaking the back of the Indian power. 

The period that followed the Indian wars was the 
most inglorious for the backwoods leader. Supreme 
as a scout and fighter, he was a child among the 
politicians. A project was under way to enlarge the 
Wilderness Road, the great highway to the West. As 
yet no wheel had traveled it, although 75,000 settlers 
had gone that way before 1796. It was peculiarly 
Boone’s road. He had been the first to find it and but 
for him the early bands that followed him would many 
times have lost heart and turned back. When he 
heard of the road project, he wrote to Governor 
Shelby asking to be given charge of the work. 

Read one sentence from his letter, spelled as it 
appears in the original: “I think my Self intitled to 
the ofer of the Bisness as I first Marked out that 
Rode in March 1775 and Never reed anythink for 
my trubel and Sepose I am no Statesman I am a 
Woodsman and think My Self as Capable of Making 
and Cutting that Rode as any other man.” 

A new day was coming in Kentucky and it held no 
place for Boone. Another built the road that he had 
marked at peril of his life. The land that he had 
selected for his own was lost through his failure to 


Daniel Boone 


91 


make proper legal entry. The title that he had 

wrested from the Indian and the wilderness had no 

standing in a court of law. 

The years that follow here hold little of importance. 
It was a dreary and restless time for the old man. 
He tried keeping country store and trading up and 
down the Ohio. Then he moved to what is now West 
Virginia and served a term in the Virginia assembly. 
At every opportunity he was. in the woods with his long 
rifle. 

Some time in the late nineties Audubon, the nat¬ 
uralist, spent a night in a cabin with him in West 

Virginia and afterwards wrote of him: “The stature 
and general appearance of this wanderer of the West¬ 
ern forests approached the gigantic. His chest was 
broad and prominent; his muscular powers displayed 
themselves in every limb; his countenance gave indica¬ 
tion of his great courage, enterprise, and perseverance; 
and when he spoke, the very motion of his lips brought 
the impression that whatever he uttered could not 
be otherwise than strictly true.” 

In 1798 he said his farewell to the country that he 
had done so much to win, “It is too crowded here. 
I want more elbowroom,” and he started down the 
Ohio in a flatboat for Missouri, where his son Daniel 
Morgan Boone had gone before him. Missouri was 
then French soil and Boone found a welcome here 
that his own land seemed to deny him. He was given 
eight hundred and fifty acres in the Femme Osage 
district and was made syndic, or local magistrate. It 
was a rude country and Boone’s rough-and-ready 


92 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

justice fitted the conditions admirably. There were 
few lawyers, which suited him, and he was often judge, 
jury, and counsel for both sides. 

When the Louisiana Territory, which included Mis¬ 
souri, was sold to the United States he found himself 
again landless, due once more to failure to register his 
title. In this extremity he turned back to his old trade 
of hunting and trapping, and in 1810 after a successful 
winter with his traps he returned to Kentucky to pay off 
some small debts that he had left there, so “No one can 
say when I am gone, ‘Boone was a dishonest man.’ ” 
When that was done he had half a dollar left. 

Three years later by special act of legislature his 
Missouri lands were returned to him. When the War 
of 1812 began, Boone was seventy-eight years old and 
had done more than his share of fighting. Neverthe¬ 
less his indignation was great when the government 
refused to accept him as a volunteer. This war saw a 
brief return of his old days of Indian fighting. The 
Usages went on the warpath and once more the old 
man was forced to hide out for several days while 
a small band of warriors searched the thickets and 
swamps for him. 

In almost the last year of his life, 1819, Chester 
Harding, an artist, visited him to ask permission to 
paint his portrait. In the course of his work he asked 
Boone if he had ever been lost. The old man lay in 
his bunk, munching a strip of venison that he had 
broiled on the end of a ramrod. “No,” he replied, “I 
can’t say as I was ever lost, but I was bewildered once 
for three days.” 


Daniel Boone 


93 


The end of his life came September 21, 1820, in 
his eighty-seventh year. Twenty-five years later his 
body, together with that of his wife, was removed to 
Frankfort, Kentucky, where a monument was erected. 

Boone won great fame in a time when all men were 
skilled in the arts in which he excelled, not merely 
because he was a great woodsman, but because he had 
in him in crude form elements of greatness of another 
kind. There were others who could equal him in craft 
as hunters and Indian fighters: probably no better 
man at this game ever lived than Simon Kenton. As 
a leader and inspirer of men Boone was inferior to 
George Rogers Clark, who saved Illinois and Indiana 
for the colonists. 

But his simple honesty, his steadfast cheerfulness 
when the going was hardest, his firm faith in his fel¬ 
lows, above all his high dream for Kentucky, have 
made him remembered where the luster of others has 
grown dim with the years. For all time the name of 
Boone will stand as the arch type of the American 
frontiersman, the man who opened the way into the 
western wilderness and made it safe for those who 
followed. 


ALEXANDER HENRY 


FUR TRADE PIONEER 

I T was in 1761 that the French lost Canada. When 
Montcalm, the French general, died on the heights 
at Quebec in his battle with Wolfe, the dream of 
French control on the American continent died with 
him. 

Canada was an empire in the making, and the back¬ 
bone of that empire was the fur trade. So far the 
French had touched it at only a few places. Montreal 
and Quebec were strongly held and there were posts 
at other places, notably Detroit, where the present 
city stands now in United States territory, and Fort 
Michilimackinac. This was the western outpost of 
French trade at the point where Lake Michigan 
empties into the upper end of Lake Huron. A short 
distance away the waters of Lake Superior poured 
through the rapids of Sault Ste. Marie. It was Ojib- 
way territory, but the tribes of the upper Mississippi, 
from Illinois, Wisconsin, and even down into Iowa, 
were in easy reach and here came the richest spoils of 
the fur trade. From here could be tapped the country 
around Superior and westward along the waters that 
now mark the boundary between the United States 
and Canada. 


94 


95 


Alexander Henry 

Before the French had actually fallen, there were 
enterprising traders in the English colonies already 
beginning to cast envious eyes at the trade with the 
Indians that they saw about to be thrown open with 
the passing of the French. One of these was Alex¬ 
ander Henry. Henry was born in New Jersey and 
at the time of the French defeat he was barely of age. 
Yet before the war ended he had already made a 
trip into Canadian territory with General Amherst, 
but as a trader, not as a soldier. He was spying out 
the land, determined that none should be ahead of him 
in the race that he foresaw. 

It was in 1761, when the treaty of peace was still a 
year and a half away, that he took the field in earnest 
with an expedition that he had outfitted partly in 
Montreal and partly in Albany, then the northern¬ 
most of the English towns on the southern side of the 
border. It was a trip full of hardships and danger. 
He knew that it was useless to stop short of Michili- 
mackinac if he was really to get at the heart of the 
fur trade, and Michilimackinac was in the center of 
country still friendly to the French. 

The Ojibways had heard that the French had been 
beaten, but they were convinced that that was only 
temporary. Presently their father the King of France 
would waken from his slumbers and drive the English 
into the sea. In the meantime they gave only half¬ 
hearted submission to the English. Pontiac, one of 
the greatest of the Indian leaders that colonial times 
produced, was preaching war all along the western 


96 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

frontier and the tribes were muttering from Hudson 
Bay to the Gulf of Mexico. 

It was into the midst of this smoldering fire that 
Henry proposed to thrust himself. A long journey 
of many weeks lay between Montreal and the upper 
end of Huron, and disaster might overtake him any¬ 
where along the way. General Gage, the British 
general in command at Montreal, gave him permission 
to make the journey and to trade with the Indians. 
We can imagine that the British commander may have 
wondered if he were not giving the rash colonial 
license to commit suicide at the same time. 

It was spring when the brigade started with Etienne 
Campion as second in command to Henry. All travel 
was by canoe, up the St. Lawrence to the upper end 
of the Island of Montreal. Thence there was a carry 
over to the Ottawa. This enabled them to avoid the 
worst of the famous Lachine rapids that had been 
given that name because the early French explorers 
believed that by that route lay the way to China. It 
was many years after the earliest explorations before 
English and French learned something of the size of 
the American continent and ceased to believe that 
it was anything more than a narrow fringe of land 
blocking the road to Asia. 

By Henry’s time English and French both knew 
that there was a great continent here and greater 
wealth to be had for the taking than even China and 
India offered. 

The canoes that Henry and his men traveled in were 
Indian birchbarks, vastly different from the shells 


97 


Alexander Henry 

that summer visitors paddle about our peaceful lakes 
to-day. They were thirty to thirty-five feet in length 
and nearly five feet wide amidships. Inside they 
were lined and braced with cedar splints. The regula¬ 
tion crew was eight paddlers, four to a side, although 
the war canoes of the Ojibways and the Algonquins 
were often manned by sixteen and sometimes as many 
as twenty paddlers. The weight-carrying ability of 
these apparently frail craft was surprising. Fre¬ 
quently as much as three tons or more of goods in 
addition to the crew would be carried on long journeys 
through rapids and across wide stretches of open 
water. 

The Ojibways were particularly skillful in the use 
of the canoe and rode it as the plains Indian rode 
the pony. To this day the descendants of these 
Indians are the master canoemen of the North Woods. 
To see one of them pilot the ticklish, skittish craft 
through leaping, boiling rapids in the rivers that run 
down to Superior from the North is to see the supreme 
art of the waterman. 

It is necessary to know this much of the equipment 
of these voyageurs setting forth on a trip that now 
occupies a trifle over twenty-four hours by rail. 
On the slow way up the Ottawa there were many 
rapids where it was necessary to portage. Portages in 
general are of two sorts—the portage proper where 
both canoes and cargoes are carried around, and 
decharges where only goods are carried, the canoes 
being poled or tracked upstream. Tracking consists 
in hauling the canoe alongshore by a line on the bow. 


98 


Boys y Own Book of Frontiersmen 

The Ottawa ran through Algonquin territory and 
Henry had many warnings along the way. “These 
English are mad for beaver,” said the Indians with 
grave shakes of the head. “The Upper Indians will 
certainly kill and eat you.” The Algonquins had had 
many bitter experiences with the Ojibways and were 
qualified to speak. 

But the adventurous traders pressed on. Three 
hundred miles from Montreal they turned up the 
Matawa, now the Mattawan, and headed for the 
Height of Land that divides the waters that flow 
into the St. Lawrence from those that drop down to 
Huron. Now they were on a river with high rocky 
shores “with scarcely earth enough for the burial of 
a dead body.” Evidently the thought of possible 
sudden death was not a stranger to young Henry’s 
mind. 

The canoes of summer vacationists now travel where 
the young trader and his men drove their way through 
a savage and unconquered land. Over the Height of 
Land they went and launched their canoes in a small 
stream that flowed into Lake Nipissing, beloved of 
fishermen for many years now. From Nipissing was 
but a short run down the French River to Huron. 

To their eyes, Huron seemed like the sea. The 
waves ran high with breaking crests, but they set forth 
and found that their loaded canoes rode well and dry. 
There were more warnings from Indians along the 
way and they took pains to disguise themselves as 
Canadians. As Henry describes it, this process was 
not very flattering to the old French voyageurs. It 


99 


Alexander Henry 

consisted of a cloth tied around the waist, a shirt 
hanging loose, a blanket coat, and a large red worsted 
cap. Hands and face were smeared with dirt and 
grease. Whatever may have been the merits of the 
“disguise,” they won through to Michilimackinac at 
the upper end of Huron. 

The post here was partly on an island and partly 
on the mainland. The old fort, garrisoned by ninety 
English soldiers at the time of Henry’s arrival, was 
on the mainland and there was a village of about a 
hundred Ojibway warriors on the island, only nomi¬ 
nally obedient to the orders of the English major in 
command. 

In spite of the unsettled condition of the Michigan 
and Superior region Henry began outfitting his canoes 
and sending them out on trading expeditions farther 
west. The Ottawas of the island of L’Arbre Croche 
in the upper part of Lake Michigan attempted to 
make trouble for him, claiming his goods on the 
ground that the English had promised them supplies* 
and had not sent them. Henry knew that if he gave 
in to them it meant the end of his trading venture and 
he stood fast. 

This was long before the days of canned and pre¬ 
pared foods that make the task of the camper and 
the explorer so much easier to-day. It was necessary 
to economize space and weight to the minimum, which 
meant that no meat or bulky articles could be carried 
even in cold weather. In consequence the only food 
carried by the traders of that day was cooked and 
pulverized corn, similar to our ground hominy. The 


100 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

regulation allowance was a quart a day per man. 
Fresh meat and fish must be secured by the voyageur 
en route. 

It was Henry’s intention to make his headquarters 
at Sault Ste. Marie at the foot of Lake Superior, a 
little over ninety miles away. Before he left Michili- 
mackinac, however, he had become friendly with an 
Indian named Wawatam who announced that he had 
had a vision commanding him to be a brother to a 
white man who was coming to the post. Henry was 
that man, the Indian declared, and Wawatam swore 
eternal friendship with him, much to Henry’s later 
profit. 

After a winter at Michilimackinac, spent in success¬ 
ful trading, Henry left for the Sault, and Wawatam 
departed for his summer hunting. Nothing much is 
to be said of that summer at the Sault. Henry was 
learning the ins and outs of Indian trading and some¬ 
thing of Indian character. Early in the winter the 
post at the Sault burned and the white men moved 
back to Michilimackinac just as the lake closed with 
the winter ice. Henry traveled back and forth several 
times during the winter, but spring found him settled 
again at Michilimackinac. 

He observed that there were many more Indians 
at the post than seemed natural at that time of year, 
and with his recently acquired knowledge of Indian 
character he sensed a tenseness in the atmosphere. 
Both he and Laurent Ducharme, a French resident of 
long experience in the country, warned the major in 
command and were laughed at as overtimid. 


101 


Alexander Henry 

Then came Wawatam from his winter trapping 
and his face grew long at sight of his white brother. 
He had hoped he was at the Sault, he said, and he too 
warned the commandant. His heart was sad, he said. 
All winter long he had been disturbed by the sound 
of evil birds. This warning also the English major 
laughed away. 

The King’s birthday came on June 4, 1763, and 
the Indians announced that there would be a big game 
of lacrosse between the Ojibways and the Sacs to cele¬ 
brate the holiday. This is the same game as is played 
to-day and is the only game that has survived of the 
many that the Indians knew. As the Indians played 
it there were a great many men on a side and the game 
might wander back and forth over a wide stretch of 
country. 

The Ojibway chief gave Henry a special invitation 
to be present and he would undoubtedly have been 
among the spectators had he not had word just before 
the game began that a canoe was leaving in a few hours 
for Montreal. This was an opportunity to send mail 
east and he went to his quarters in the fort to write 
his letters. 

His room opened on the space enclosed by a stock¬ 
ade. As he wrote he heard the shouts of the players 
and the onlookers. Suddenly the noise came closer 
and changed from cheers to savage shouts and screams 
of pain. He looked out of his window and saw the 
Indians within the palisade striking down the soldiers 
and the English traders. The threatened massacre 
had begun. The Indian players had thrown the ball 


102 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

over the stockade and made that an excuse for follow¬ 
ing into forbidden ground. 

In that mortal crisis time counted by seconds and 
there was no margin for thinking. Instinctively he 
realized that the only chance of safety lay with the 
French residents whom the Ojibways regarded as their 
allies. 

Slipping out another way he ran to the house of 
one Langlade, a Frenchman long resident at the post, 
and begged for shelter. Langlade feared for the 
safety of his wife and children and shook his head. 
An Indian woman, a slave taken long before in a 
raid on the Pawnee country far to the southwest, 
beckoned him to a side entrance and took him in and 
hid him in the garret. There he lay all night long 
and listened to the sound of butchery still going on 
outside. Once the Indians came to the door of the 
room where he lay, but failed to see him. 

In the morning Langlade learned of the guest that 
he had entertained unawares and, still fearful for the 
safety of his own family, told the Indians of Henry’s 
hiding place. Chief Weenniway strode into the garret 
and stood with lifted knife. To Henry it was the 
last moment, but almost as he could feel the point at 
his throat Weenniway was seized with a sudden whim 
and announced that the white trader should be his 
slave. Twice more in the two days that followed 
Henry was at the point of death and each time a new 
gust of impulse saved his life. 

Seventy of the soldiers in the garrison had been 
killed in the first fighting and seven of the prisoners 


103 


Alexander Henry 

were killed afterwards and eaten. In ordinary times 
the American Indians regarded cannibalism with the 
greatest abhorrence, but it was sometimes practiced 
after a battle in the belief that in this way the courage 
of their enemies would pass into their own hearts. 

Just when Henry’s hope had about departed his 
Indian brother Wawatam appeared. Now the tide 
turned in his favor. Wawatam marched straight to 
Menehwehna, the war chief who had been in command 
at the massacre, and claimed Henry as his own. He 
reminded the chief that Henry’s safety had been 
promised him when the massacre was planned and that 
a solemn pledge had been broken. The savage fighter 
meekly agreed and Henry was turned over to 
Wawatam. 

The latter was still not convinced that his lodge 
was the safest place in the world for a white man, 
even though he was a brother of the Indian master of 
the tepee. It was decided, therefore, to go to the 
island of Michilimackinac. On the way a storm blew 
up and the canoe was nearly swamped. The paddlers 
tied the legs of a dog together and threw the poor 
brute overboard to still the waves. It was a new 
measure of safety to Henry, but he was obliged to 
admit that they reached the island in good order. 

Two canoes loaded with goods from Montreal were 
captured by the Indians on the way and taken ashore 
with them. In accordance with the dangerous custom 
of the day an important item in the “goods” was 
rum, and as soon as the Indians recovered from their 
fright over the storm they prepared for another 


104 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

debauch. Wawatam was torn between two desires. 
He had pledged his life for the safety of his white 
brother and he very much wanted to join the big drunk 
that he saw starting. He solved the problem by hiding 
Henry away in a cave on the highest point of this 
rocky island and then hurried down to join the others 
already swarming around the rum casks on the beach. 

The debauch lasted two days. On the morning 
after the first night Henry discovered that the round, 
hard objects on the floor of the cave, that had dis¬ 
turbed his sleep the first night, were human bones and 
he spent the second night in the open outside the cave. 
When a sobered Wawatam came for him on the third 
day Henry asked for an explanation of the bones. The 
Indian expressed much surprise and ignorance and fell 
back on evil spirits for an easy explanation. Henry 
concluded that the spirits spoke Ojibway and was 
glad enough to accept any explanation so long as he 
might at once see the last of such a gruesome hiding 
place. 

The end of white control in the upper waters of 
the Great Lakes was apparently at an end. The English 
were having their hands full holding Detroit, which 
was under siege, and there were neither men nor energy 
to spare for the subjugation of the rebellious tribes¬ 
men at Michilimackinac. Henry was safe, but he saw 
no chance of escape and return to Montreal. Neither 
did he see any prospect of the recovery of the goods 
that represented his entire investment and his hope 
for the future. 

For the present there was nothing for him to do 


105 


Alexander Henry 

but stay with his friend Wawatam and be as thankful 
as he could that he was still alive. In the meantime he 
used his opportunities for learning the ways and the 
language of the Indians. He was apparently far from 
despairing of the future of his plans for trade. One 
thing was certain; an obvious white man was in dan¬ 
ger, no matter how friendly some of the Indians 
might be toward him. For this reason, he discarded 
his English clothes, had his head shaved except for 
a scalplock at the top, and painted himself Indian 
fashion. 

He had a knowledge of simple remedies which 
stood him in good stead. Indian medicine was largely 
one of charms and incantations to which they at¬ 
tributed many remarkable recoveries from wounds and 
other injuries which came to Henry’s attention. It is 
probable that this was principally due to sound general 
health, plenty of fresh air and pure water. The 
white man’s remedy of that day which seemed to appeal 
most strongly to savage taste was the old practice of 
bleeding. In fact so popular was this, especially among 
the women, that Henry would frequently find four or 
five waiting for him in the morning with imaginary 
ailments which they were sure only bleeding could cure. 

The first winter was spent with Wawatam on a hunt 
along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. It was 
the practice of the Ojibway families to spend the 
winters separately hunting in small groups. The prin¬ 
cipal object was beaver, although deer and bear were 
also welcome. All through this country the beaver 
was the great staff of life. The skin furnished 


106 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

clothing and was the prime article of barter while the 
flesh was eaten, the broad, thick tail being an especial 
delicacy. The Ojibways believed that the beaver had 
once had the power of speech but had been deprived 
of it by Nanibojou, the Great Spirit and Giver of Life, 
lest the animal, being more intelligent, shoulcf become 
more powerful than man. 

The bear was also entitled to particular veneration. 
After a successful bear hunt it was the practice to 
apologize to the dead animal and to explain that it was 
necessary to kill him for food. He was addressed 
most politely as “Grandfather” and at the feast which 
always followed the bear’s head was decked with 
ornaments and given the place of honor. Powdered 
tobacco was placed near by and tobacco smoke was 
blown into the bear’s nostrils. At one feast after a 
successful hunt of Henry’s it was carefully explained 
to the bear that an Englishman had killed him. Henry 
rather tartly observes that after the apology had been 
duly made there was no apparent unwillingness to 
enjoy the flesh of Grandfather Bear. 

Feasting was an important part of all ceremonies. 
Early in the hunt Henry returned to the camp one 
afternoon to find elaborate preparations under way. 
It was contrary to Indian etiquette to ask the reason, 
but in due course he learned that it was the feast of 
the dead. Wawatam opened the proceedings with a 
long oration in which he invited the spirits of dead rela¬ 
tives to aid in the winter’s hunting, after which all 
hands fell to and ate—both for themselves and for 
the absent ones whom they had invoked. 


107 


Alexander Henry 

Henry’s most thrilling experience during the winter 
was to be lost on a solitary hunt. A severe storm 
came up and it was four days before he found his 
way back to camp. The snow was deep and the cold 
intense, but he lived through the nights by crawling 
under a crude shelter of loose bark that he tore from 
the trees. Clouds obscured the sun, but he finally found 
his way by observing the top branches of the pines 
and the moss on the tree trunks. As a general rule 
these branches tend to lean toward the east and moss 
is often thickest on the northerly side of the trunks of 
certain trees. Also the largest branches are apt to be 
on the southerly side of the tree. These tendencies 
vary with the slope of the ground, exposure to strong 
prevailing winds, and the nearness of other trees, but 
the average was good enough to bring Henry back 
to a stream that he remembered as leading to the 
camp. 

With the coming of spring the party turned 
northward again and fresh fears arose for Henry’s 
safety. Wawatam’s wife had had visions of evil and 
there were many strange Indians about, fresh from the 
siege of Detroit. Opportunity to go to the Sault ap¬ 
peared in the form of Mme. Cadotte—or Cadet—the 
Indian wife of Jean Baptiste Cadotte. Cadotte was 
a powerful man in that country and was the only 
French trader of importance in that part of Canada 
to hold his ground after the English came into power. 
Henry’s trip with Mme. Cadotte was the beginning 
of a friendship and an association with the husband 
that lasted for several years. 


108 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

Before the Cadotte alliance, however, there was an 
interruption that for a time promised to be permanent. 
A messenger arrived from Sir William Johnson, 
speaking for both the English and the tribes of the 
Iroquois, inviting the Ojibways to send delegates to a 
powwow to be held at Fort Niagara near the Falls. 
Johnson was probably the most powerful man among 
the Indians that has ever appeared in the history of 
America. For many years his word was law with the 
Iroquois, and there were few tribes that cared to try 
conclusions with those shrewd, grim fighters of Central 
New York. Johnson lived among them and, after the 
capture of Canada, had been made commissioner for 
all the Northern Indians. It was largely through his 
influence that the tribes of the Iroquois had refrained 
from joining the Pontiac conspiracy that had set the 
Western tribes aflame. 

Henry saw in this invitation of Johnson’s a chance 
to get in touch with the whites again and offered him¬ 
self as one who knew both races. But before the dele¬ 
gation could be appointed it was necessary to consult 
the Great Turtle, the friendly spirit of these Ojibways. 
Great Turtle is the literal meaning of Michilimackinac. 

The ceremony, as Henry describes it, must have 
been something like a modern spiritistic seance. An 
especially large lodge was erected and within it was 
still another lodge of skins for the medicine men who 
had charge. These worthies disappeared within the 
inner lodge and soon there began a medley of noises, 
the cries of birds and animals. 

It was announced that the first of these were evil 


109 


Alexander Henry 

spirits attempting to interfere with the Great Turtle. 
But soon the voice of the Turtle was heard advising 
them to make the trip and hear what the white chief 
had to say. Henry was present and watched closely, 
but was unable to detect the trick. 

It was a long trip to Niagara for the sixteen men 
who left the Sault June io, 1764 . The route was by 
way of the present city of Toronto and thence across 
Lake Ontario to Fort Niagara near the Falls. Early 
in the trip Henry disturbed a rattlesnake and was 
about to kill it when the horrified Indians stopped him 
and made abject apologies to the reptile. It appears 
that this was another grandfather and to have killed 
it would have been to invite disaster. This is one of 
the few authentic references to the finding of this snake 
so far north. 

At Fort Niagara the powwow was soon concluded 
and Henry was invited to go with General Bradstreet, 
who was in command of an expedition to raise the 
siege of Detroit. This fort had now been beleaguered 
by Pontiac for a full year and there had been many 
appeals for help. Henry was to have command of 
a special brigade of a hundred Indians. Most of his 
embryo soldiers deserted as soon as they discovered 
that they must obey orders and fight white man fashion, 
but Henry held a handful together and went to Detroit 
and was present at the peace with Pontiac that fol¬ 
lowed soon after. 

This was the end of serious Indian trouble in this 
part of Canada and a garrison was soon sent north 
to Michilimackinac and the Sault. Henry went along, 


110 Boys* Own Book of Frontiersmen 

convinced now that he was about to see the restora¬ 
tion of his trading rights. And he was not disap¬ 
pointed. Not only were his rights restored, but he 
was given a monopoly of the fur trade in the whole 
Superior region. 

Under the English system, trading was carried on 
by license, and unlicensed traders were outlaws. To 
the north was the great Hudson’s Bay Company es¬ 
tablished nearly a century before and claiming a 
monopoly of trade in all the lands drained by the 
rivers flowing into Hudson Bay. This was being 
extended as fast as their posts could push out until 
the Lakes region was also about to come into dispute. 
Henry chose for his partner Cadotte, whose wife had 
given him transportation to the Sault a year before. 

Now began a period of activity for Henry that lasted 
for ten years, in the course of which he was seldom to 
see white faces except the men actually with him in the 
field. Cadotte’s post was at the Sault, but Henry 
was constantly in the wilderness, at some remote trad¬ 
ing post that he had built, or traveling by canoe or 
with snowshoes and dog team through vast unmarked 
stretches to the west and north. Before he was 
through he had been nearly to Hudson Bay and west 
to the great prairies that stretched to the Rockies. 

For the first two or three years, however, he con¬ 
fined his activity to the country around Superior, win¬ 
tering first at what is now Chequamegon on the 
southern shore of the lake. Here he lived mostly on 
dried fish and wild meat, having no bread or salt. On 
the way he saw something of the copper deposits near 


Alexander Henry 111 

where are now the great Calumet and Hecla mines in 
the northern peninsula of Michigan. 

He was more impressed, however, with his sight of 
the Grave of the Iroquois. Here there had been a 
great battle between the Iroquois and Ojibways a cen¬ 
tury before. Ojibway tradition held that a thousand 
of the invaders were killed, but history insists that the 
number was nearer a hundred. Of the copper Henry 
remarks that it might some time have value, but it 
would hardly ever be more than local in its importance. 
Within a hundred years the mines here were of world¬ 
wide reputation and influence. 

One of the events that he records of that winter 
at Chequamegon was a great bear feast in which he 
was expected to eat ten pounds of bear meat at a single 
sitting. He admits that he failed in his full duty, 
but his Indian guests easily took care of his leavings. 
The Indians were prodigious eaters on occasion, but 
they could with equal ease go without food, in case of 
need, for a period of time that was beyond the powers 
of the average white man. Feast or famine was the 
rule of the wilderness. 

The next winter was a hard one at the Sault. The 
fall catch of fish was poor and heavy storms and early 
ice had cut off the supply of food from down below. 
Henry was scouting along the north shore fishing 
through the ice and hunting for caribou when a starving 
Indian came into camp and announced himself as the 
sole survivor of a band of hunters who had perished 
from starvation. Suspicions were aroused and it was 


112 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

proved beyond doubt that he had practiced the horrid 
rites of cannibalism on the other members of his party. 

There was no trial, but the decision seems to have 
been prompt and unanimous. Henry records the fact 
simply that he was killed by the blow of an axe in the 
hands of one of the Indians with Henry. Such men 
were called Windigos by the Ojibways and the belief 
was firmly held that once the fearful appetite was 
aroused it could never be stilled. To the Indian mind 
there was no inconsistency in this attitude with the 
ghastly feast that had followed the slaughter at 
Michilimackinac. 

Somehow they won through to spring and his jour¬ 
nal goes on to tell of another hard winter at Michi- 
picoten on the north shore of Superior. This time 
they were reduced to eating lichen or moss that grew 
on the rocks. Henry’s feet were carrying him farther 
into the wilderness with each season and he was gradu¬ 
ally shaping his plans for his great western wandering. 

At Michipicoten he found himself on sacred ground. 
It was a territory sacred to Nanibojou the Creator and 
Great Spirit of the Indian tribes. On the rocky shores 
of the lake, wind and weather had worn the rocks into 
queer shapes. These were variously the footprints 
of Nanibojou, his couch, the place where he had sat 
to rest a while, the spot where he beached his canoe, 
the place where his lodge stood, and so on. 

Not only was Nanibojou the Creator of the Indians, 
but the tradition about him told of a great flood of 
which he had warning. The parallel with Noah and 
the ark is striking. Nanibojou built a great raft and 


113 


Alexander Henry 

saved thereon the members of his own family and two 
of each of the animals that he thought worth preserv¬ 
ing. Later he discovered that the animals were coming 
to think much too well of themselves and had planned 
a great conspiracy against the children of men. He 
suppressed the conspiracy and in punishment took from 
the animals the power of speech which they had 
hitherto enjoyed. Probably this was the time when 
the beaver lost their tongues. 

Michipicoten continued to be his headquarters until 
1775 when he was ready for his great move. In the 
meantime he had heard of an island with yellow sands 
—which of course meant gold. The island was 
guarded by a multitude of great serpents. He or¬ 
ganized a mining enterprise and eventually found the 
island, but there was neither sand nor snakes. Caribou 
he found in abundance and many hawks, but that 
marked the end of his mining dreams. 

It was June 10, 1775, when he turned his back on 
the Sault and struck to the westward. It was not an 
unknown route that he traveled. Forty-five years earlier 
Verendrye had traversed it, establishing posts and 
making rude maps of the country. To the northwest 
the Hudson’s Bay Company couriers and traders had 
known the waterways winter and summer for nearly 
a hundred years. But it was wilderness travel and hard 
going. The way lay along the northern shore of 
Superior to what was called the Grande Portage at 
the northwest extremity of the lake. Here there was 
a nine-mile carry around the lower falls of the Pigeon 


114 Boys 9 Own Book of Frontiersmen 

River, now the boundary between the United States 
and Canada. 

Seven days they labored to carry canoes and loads 
across this weary trail, and there were several more 
carries before they were to find their way into the 
more quiet waters of the boundary lakes. To-day 
this is familiar country to canoemen in search of fishing 
and camping. Rose, Gunflint, North, Saginaga, Rainy 
Lake, Lake of the Woods—many thousands of sports¬ 
men and wilderness wanderers know these names. In 
many cases the names are as they were in Henry’s 
time, although some of them have suffered a change 
from French to English. Lac la Pluie, for example, 
becomes Rainy Lake, and Lake of the Woods was 
Lac des Bois in those old days. 

And they are still wilderness lakes for the most 
part. The lumberman has come and gone and the 
forest has grown up and covered the traces of the 
axe and the tote road. There are many places where 
there are few more signs of civilization now than 
Henry saw. 

At the northwest arm of Lake of the Woods the 
voyageurs were three hundred and twenty-five miles 
from their starting place at the Sault. There is an 
odd little story about this particular spot. After the 
Revolution, when it was necessary to fix the boundary 
between the United States and Canada, it was be¬ 
lieved that here was where the forty-ninth parallel 
of latitude crossed. This parallel was to be the divid¬ 
ing line. Later it was found that the latitude was 
actually forty-nine degrees and thirty-seven minutes. 


115 


Alexander Henry 

The original error was corrected by a jog called the 
Northwest Angle which can be seen on any map show¬ 
ing the boundary between the States and Canada in 
Minnesota. 

At Lake of the Woods they found themselves in 
old French trading country going back to the days of 
Verendrye. The Indians had profited by their ex¬ 
perience with white men and demanded presents before 
they would let Henry’s party proceed. Especially did 
they demand “milk,” which was their polite name for 
rum. In the midst of the debauch which followed 
Henry stole away and crossed over into the Winnipeg 
River by Rat Portage. 

If you travel north by canoe to-day you will cross 
at the same point and the name is still Rat Portage. 
Thence they paddled down the Winnipeg to the Carry¬ 
ing Place of the Lost Child. Here was a chasm only 
six feet wide but very deep—bottomless, the Indians 
said, and cursed with the memory of an old tragedy. 
The Indians believed that on stormy nights the child 
could still be heard crying from the depths. 

Now they were on the Pinawa which led them to 
Lake Winnipeg. This was the country of the Crees, 
Cristinaux, Henry calls them. They, too, had learned 
the ways of the white man and demanded milk. But 
they took the precaution of assigning two Crees to 
Henry as guards. These were under solemn orders 
to keep sober and to protect the white man and his 
goods no matter what the temptation, and apparently 
they obeyed. 

The route was still north and west up the right-hand 


116 Boys } Own Book of Frontiersmen 

side of Winnipeg. They were nearing Hudson’s Bay 
Company country, and there were free traders too. 
On Winnipeg they met Peter Pond, one of the earliest 
English traders to press in here, even ahead of the 
great Company itself. 

The end of Peter was tragic. Several years after 
Henry saw him he was charged with the murder of 
an associate and was put on trial. Evidence was 
lacking and he was acquitted. Set free, he disappeared 
into the wilderness and never was seen from that day. 

They were still heading northwest. On the way 
three free traders overtook them—Joseph and 
Thomas Frobisher and a man named Patterson. Pat¬ 
terson soon disappeared from the chronicles, but the 
Frobishers were to join with Henry to form the North¬ 
west Company, the greatest rival of the Hudson’s Bay 
Company. In the course of the next fifty years this 
rivalry developed great bitterness. There were 
pitched battles, single couriers were ambushed, posts 
were stormed and burned, traders turned loose in the 
winter wilderness, without food or ammunition, to find 
their way or starve. Finally, when both parties had 
fought themselves nearly to exhaustion, common sense 
prevailed and they joined forces and the name of the 
Northwest Company disappeared except as a heroic 
page in fur-trade history. 

But all this was still in the making, that winter when 
Henry and the Frobishers joined up, on the way to 
their first winter quarters on Beaver Lake. There 
were ten canoes and forty-three men in the party that 
paddled up the Saskatchewan to Cumberland House, 


117 


Alexander Henry 

one of the far western outposts of the Hudson’s Bay 
Company. On the way Chatique, a Cree chief, 
stopped them with the constantly recurring demand 
for presents. They thought they had satisfied him 
and went on their way, when Chatique appeared com* 
ing after them with the angry demand for “milk” for 
himself alone. Evidently they complied with this, too, 
for Henry merely mentions the fact and goes on with 
his story. 

Apparently the Hudson’s Bay opposition to free 
traders had not yet reached its full height of bitterness, 
for the head factor at Cumberland House gave them 
such aid as they needed and offered them quarters 
for the winter if they would stay. But their eyes 
were fixed on a point still farther north. They had 
heard of the rich prize of furs to be had on Churchill 
River flowing into Hudson Bay, but they finally pitched 
on Beaver Lake as the site for their headquarters 
post. One strong argument for this location was the 
abundance of fish to be had. Without food no spot 
was livable in those days when the isolated posts must 
maintain themselves after the long winter had shut 
down. 

With the coming of that first winter Henry began 
to prepare for the realization of one of his dreams 
in coming to that remote country. Ever since he had 
been at Michilimackinac he had heard of the great 
prairies that stretched westward to the Rocky Moun¬ 
tains. On January i, 1776, he started on his greatest 
wandering of all. The first stopping place was Cum¬ 
berland House, a hundred and twenty miles away. 


118 Boys* Own Book of Frontiersmen 

Something of the casual ease with which those men 
fronted the wilderness can be seen in the fact that 
Thomas Frobisher went with him as far as Cumber¬ 
land House principally for company on the trail. The 
other companions of Henry were unnamed voyageurs 
from the post at Beaver Lake and probably a few 
Indians. 

It was intensely cold and they traveled wrapped 
in coats of beaver and at night they slept in robes of 
buffalo skin—wild oxen as Henry called them. Their 
principal food was dried meat, dried fish, and pralines. 
The last-named was a special preparation of pounded 
corn and sugar. The sugar was a necessary element 
for men working hard in severe cold and requiring 
large quantities of heating food. The days were short 
and when they took the trail at three o’clock in the 
morning there were still six hours till sunrise. Sunset 
was at half past two in the afternoon. 

The early morning was the favorite time to hit the 
trail, since there were less likely to be high winds to 
torment them with their stinging force. Supplies were 
hauled on toboggans, one of the three great legacies 
of the Indian to the white man. The other two were 
the snowshoe and the canoe. 

Westward from Cumberland House their destina¬ 
tion was Fort des Prairies. The cold grew worse and 
high winds cut their faces. To add to their troubles 
storms delayed them and supplies ran low. Little 
game was sighted and presently they were reduced to 
a small ration of chocolate. This was probably the 
hard, unsweetened variety of our grandfathers’ time. 


119 


Alexander Henry 

Henry boiled a little of it in a couple of gallons of 
water, barely enough to color the water. His men 
doubted its food value and asked to be allowed to 
lie down and die. Henry drank the mixture with a 
great air of relish and assured them that he could 
travel another five days on a few swallows of such a 
stimulating liquid. He was evidently a convincing 
actor. At least his men arose and drank and stag¬ 
gered on. 

Presently they weakened again and were revived 
with more chocolate and water. Wolves kept pace 
with them on either flank and the men pointed to them 
as evil omens. Henry spoke of the virtues of wolf 
steak and took a snapshot at an especially daring 
beast, but missed. They were almost at the end of 
their feeble reserves of strength and courage when 
they found scattered in the snow the bones of a 
caribou that had been pulled down by the wolves. 

When a wolf has dined at his leisure there is little 
comfort for those who come to the second table, but 
Henry made a soup of a few of the bones and once 
more put heart in his men with talk of the strength 
that the kettle held for them. The next day brought 
them real food. Early in the winter an elk had gone 
through the new ice of a river and the body had been 
held there preserved in the great refrigerator that the 
northern winter made of that river. No special argu¬ 
ments were required this time to convince the men 
that their stomachs had found comfort. 

Twenty-seven days from the time they left Beaver 
Lake they found snowshoe tracks pointing westward 


120 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

and that evening they reached Fort des Prairies. Here 
was food in abundance. The travelers feasted on the 
tongues and marrow of “wild bulls” and Henry told 
afterwards of the cheering sight of fifty tons of frozen 
buffalo meat piled in a room of the fort. 

Now at what they had thought was their journey’s 
end they found that the real prairie was still beyond 
them. After a few days’ rest Henry joined a party 
of Indians bound westward for more open country. 
This time they traveled with dog sleds, Indian fashion. 
The women of the party did the work, breaking trail, 
setting up the teepees, preparing the food. The cold 
grew still more severe. Though they slept fourteen in 
a tepee under buffalo robes with their feet to the 
fire they were never warm. 

The great event of this part of the trip was a visit 
to the village of Chief Great Road of the Assiniboines. 
Of course a feast was held and endless speeches were 
delivered. Henry inquired why the ceremonies began 
with loud weeping and wailing by all the Indians and 
learned that it was for their dead relatives who could 
no longer eat long and heavily with them. Another 
fact that struck him curiously, used as he was to the 
shaven heads and the scalplocks of the eastern tribes, 
was the long, unkempt hair of Great Road. The 
chief informed him that each Indian had some object 
of special adoration. He had chosen to worship his 
hair, hence it was never cut nor brushed. 

During his stay with Great Road’s people a buffalo 
hunt was held. This was a drive rather than a chase 
such as the Sioux and the Cheyennes and the Blackfeet 


121 


Alexander Henry 

farther south were wont to practice. A great corral 
or pen was built in the edge of a grove. From the 
entrance, fences were run out wing fashion for a con¬ 
siderable distance. Men wearing buffalo hides and 
horns went out toward the herd to decoy them to the 
corral. 

Henry declares that so lifelike were the appearance 
and the bellowings of these decoys that he himself 
would have been deceived at a little distance. At 
any rate seventy-two of the “wild oxen” were led into 
the pen and killed. The tongues were presented to 
the chief as a special delicacy. The humps also were 
highly esteemed by Indians and whites alike. 

There was no special event apparently to record on 
the return trip to Beaver Lake and there he found his 
partners had wintered well and had accumulated a 
large store of furs. When spring came Henry’s feet 
would not let him stay still and he headed northwest 
again, this time as far as Lake Athabaska where he 
heard of a great river rising in the Rockies and flowing 
east to mingle with the Athabaska. We know it to-day 
as the Peace. We know, too—as Henry did not— 
that the Jerseyman had crossed another height of land 
and had launched his canoe in waters that flowed north 
to the Arctic. 

Meanwhile his fur-trading venture had developed 
under the watchful eyes of the Frobishers and it was 
necessary for Henry to make his way east to arrange 
for the sale of furs and the sending out of fresh 
supplies. The route back was by the way he had come 
and at Lake of the Woods he heard from Indians 


122 Boys* Own Book of Frontiersmen 

that some strange nation had captured Montreal, killed 
all the English, and would soon be fighting at Grand 
Portage. Henry hazarded the guess that it must be 
the Bostonnais. “Yes,” said the Indians. “That’s 
the name.” 

Bostonnais was the name current through Canada 
for the English colonies on the Atlantic seaboard. 
Henry’s guess was right. The Revolution had begun. 
The land of his birth was in rebellion and the Indian 
rumor that a new nation had arisen was a true one. 

Back at Montreal he found that the capture of the 
town had been a brief one. Arnold and Montgomery 
had marched away almost as soon as they had come 
and the English flag waved again. 

That was the end of Alexander Henry’s career as a 
frontiersman. His long wandering through the North¬ 
west seemed to have satisfied his desire. For the rest 
of his life, though, he held his interest, and for many 
years his active participation, in the Indian trade. 
Another Henry, a nephew, repeated in large part 
his exploring feats and carried them farther. But 
the first Henry was content to be a merchant in Mont¬ 
real to the end of his days, with the exception of two 
or three brief trips to Michilimackinac and the Sault. 

He was eighty-five years old when he died in 1824 , 
and the railroad and the steamboat were almost ready 
to begin their great work of revolutionizing Western 
travel and trade. He had seen the raw lands of the 
new-born Dominion when the Indian still disputed the 
right of the English to rule them and the French flag 
was the only one that received respect north of the 


123 


Alexander Henry 

forty-ninth parallel. When he died the Stars and 
Stripes had flown for nearly half a century below that 
parallel and he had seen the beginning of the long 
reign of peace along the boundary between the two 
great American nations. 


JOE MEEK 


THE MESSENGER FROM OREGON 

'C'ROM first to last Joe Meek, or Joseph L. Meek, 
to give him his full baptismal name, was the bad 
boy of the American frontier. At the age of eighteen 
he began by running away from his Virginia home, 
a step that we are assured is certain to lead to un¬ 
pleasant results. That early act was an indication of 
the unruly, extravagant acts that were to characterize 
his whole life. Nevertheless few men were more 
prominent or important in the early days of the Oregon 
colony. 

He was fortunate in some of his early associates. 
Captain William Sublette, one of the powe&s in the 
American fur trade, picked him up in St. Louis, 
whither he had wandered by the easy road of the Ohio 
and the Mississippi. Something in the bold bearing 
of the ragged youngster attracted the stalwart West¬ 
erner, who took him with him to the summer ren¬ 
dezvous of the traders and trappers on the Popo Agie. 
That was in 1829 . In that day the Oregon country, 
which was the name applied to what are now the 
two states of Oregon and Washington, was under the 
joint control of Great Britain and the United States. 

Eleven years earlier the boundary between the States 
124 


Joe Meek 


125 

and Canada had been settled on the forty-ninth par¬ 
allel of latitude as far west as the Rocky Mountains. 
From there to the Pacific the line was to be deter¬ 
mined by the course of settlement. It was not realized 
at the time that this meant almost certainly American 
control, since the great power of the British in that 
region was the Hudson’s Bay Company, a trading 
and not a colonizing organization. In fact, as far 
as they dared, the factors 1 of the Company discouraged 
settlements, since they interfered with the fur trade. 

This fact was a double incentive to the Americans 
and especially to the crowd with which young Meek 
found himself joined. After that first summer ren¬ 
dezvous he pushed on west across the mountains with 
Milton Sublette, a younger brother of the captain, into 
Hudson’s Bay Company territory on the Snake River 
in what is now Idaho. With the approach of winter 
they turned back across the range again into the 
warmer country to the eastward. Associated with 
Sublette in command of the party was Jedediah Smith, 
distinguished among trappers for the fact that he car¬ 
ried a Bible as well as a rifle. An old mountaineer 
once said of Smith: “A mild man and a Christian; 
and there were very few of them in the mountains.” 

It is to be feared that neither of these phrases 
would apply to Meek, even from the beginning. In a 
day and even among men whose habits of temperance 
were far from marked he was outstanding for both 
appetite and capacity. Not long after his baptism as 


1 This was the name applied to the men in charge of the posts. 
They were mostly Scotch, with a few Englishmen. 



126 Boys* Own Book of Frontiersmen 

a trapper a mad wolf came into camp one night and 
bit two or three men. Meek was drunk at the time. 
In the discussion of the danger that followed, some¬ 
body warned Meek that he might as easily have been 
one of the victims, helpless as he was. Nothing 
daunted, Meek expressed his sympathy for the wolf. 
“It would have cured him sure—if it hadn’t killed 
him.” 

The great part of Meek’s trapping experience was 
in the country of those warlike vagabonds among In¬ 
dian tribes, the Crows and the Blackfeet. This first 
winter was marked by a brush with the Blackfeet at 
the Gallatin forks of the Missouri. Meek was cut off 
in a sudden attack and wandered alone for four or five 
days. He was almost starved when he finally found 
his friends again, but incidents such as this were mere 
punctuation marks in the career of the trapper. 

Soon after this he and Milton Sublette rode unex¬ 
pectedly upon a village of the Snakes. There was no 
time to retreat and the two men dashed boldly into 
the middle of the encampment, before the surprised 
braves could cut them down, and took refuge in the 
medicine lodge which gave them temporary right of 
sanctuary. In the trial that followed they were for¬ 
mally condemned to death, but the night before the 
time set for the execution an old chief came to them 
and led them out of the sleeping village and gave them 
their horses with the advice that they ride for all they 
knew away from there. 

There is a tradition that an Indian girl, named 
Mountain Lamb, rode with them to become the wife 


Joe Meek 


127 


of Sublette. It is fairly certain, at least, that about 
this time Sublette had an Indian wife whose name 
could be freely translated as Mountain Lamb. 

In common with other trapper tales, the early his¬ 
tory of Meek’s career is confused, fact and fiction 
being hopelessly intermingled. It is certain that he 
was associated at times with Kit Carson, and the 
early friendship with the Sublettes endured as long 
as these two brothers operated in the north. There 
is a record of one trip to the south by Meek and it 
is said also that he was one of Carson’s associates in 
the fight with the Comanches when the whites lay be¬ 
hind the dead bodies of their mules on the open prairie 
and picked off the medicine men as they led the charges. 

What is certain is that Meek in all his wanderings 
remained the reckless, irresponsible, hard-riding, hard- 
drinking, hard-fighting man of the mountains as long as 
his trapping days lasted—and longer. He was in 
the fight at Pierre’s Hole, a battle famous in moun¬ 
tain annals, and after an ambush in the Pryor’s River 
region he showed eleven bullet holes through the 
blanket that he had worn draped over his arm as he 
rode. In another fight on the Gallatin, the Blackfeet 
fired the grass and the trees caught fire so that both 
parties fought in a spreading smoke screen. Finally 
the Indians drew off disgusted at the too great suc¬ 
cess of their own strategy. 

Men like these took their humor much as they took 
the rest of their lives, rough and hard. A small party 
of which Meek was one rode into an ambush on the 
Yellowstone. Meek had the misfortune to be mounted 


128 Boys* Own Book of Frontiersmen 

on a balky mule and saw his comrades fast drawing 
away from him as the Indians came nearer. Feeling 
his scalp loosening he called after the other trappers: 
“Hold on, boys. There ain’t many of them. Let’s 
stop and fight ’em.” 

By this time the Indians were close enough so that 
his mule caught the dreaded Indian smell. The im¬ 
mediate result was a burst of speed that carried mule 
and rider past the fleeing trappers as though they 
were tied. As he sped by Meek shouted back, “Run 
for your lives, boys. There’s ten thousand of them. 
They’ll kill every one of you.” 

The year 1835 ‘marked the first of Meek’s some¬ 
what casual domestic experiments. Milton Sublette 
had gone to St. Louis for an operation, leaving his 
Indian wife behind. Apparently this constituted a di¬ 
vorce in the easy manner of the mountains. At any 
rate we are told that in that year she was married 
to Meek. She was a young lady of spirit and on one 
occasion drove a thieving brave out of camp at the 
muzzle of one of her husband’s pistols. 

Before he had been married a year Meek was a 
widower, but before she met her death in a fight with 
the Blackfeet his squaw wife was the unwitting cause 
of a furious row. Meek was trapping with one of 
Bridger’s parties in the Crow country and a Crow 
warrior, probably inflamed with the drink that passed 
too much and too often, struck her with a whip. Under 
the Indian code it was a minor offense, if an offense 
at all, but the Mountain Lamb was now tne wife of a 
white man, and Meek killed the Crow where he stood. 


Joe Meek 


129 


A general fight followed in which one white man and 
two or three Indians were killed. After peace had 
been restored Bridger took Meek to task. 

“Well, you raised a hell of a row in camp,” said 
Bridger. 

“Very sorry, Bridger, but I couldn’t help it. No 
devil of an Indian shall strike Meek’s wife.” 

“But you got a man killed,” Bridger insisted. 

“Sorry for the man; I couldn’t help it, though, 
Bridger.” 

And that was all the satisfaction that Jim Bridger 
got out of Joe Meek. 

Soon after the death of his wife Meek was cap¬ 
tured by the Crows in the Yellowstone. His mule 
had mired down in a swampy place and the trapper 
surrendered at discretion. The Indians knew him of 
old and were well aware of his frequent flights of the 
imagination. The chief evidently thought that he had 
Meek in a corner for once and offered him his freedom 
if he would tell the truth in answer to all questions. 
Meek promptly agreed. 

The chief asked the name of the captain of the 
party to which he belonged. “Bridger.” The Indians 
knew that already, as Meek had guessed. 

“How many men has he?” This was a delicate 
question, for the Indians numbered something less 
than two hundred and Bridger had a large and well- 
equipped band under his command. “I thought about 
telling the truth and living,” said Meek years after¬ 
ward, “but I said forty, which war a tremendous lie, 
for thar war two hundred and forty.” 


130 Boys } Own Book of Frontiersmen 

But there came near being a day of judgment for 
the mountain Ananias for the Indians overtook the 
whites before they released him and the chief was 
on the point of ordering Meek’s summary execution. 
He had a sober second thought, however, as he ob¬ 
served the threatening array of the trappers and sent 
a sub-chief out to confer with Bridger. Then ensued 
a characteristic piece of mountain diplomacy. Al¬ 
though the Indian went under a flag of truce, Bridger 
ordered him held as a hostage and then offered to ex¬ 
change him for Meek. Fortunately, the Indians saw 
nothing improper in this sharp practice and made a 
treaty of peace for three months. To Meek they 
gave the name of Shiam Shaspusia because he was a 
bigger liar even than the Crows, which was a rare 
distinction in their eyes. 

Civilization had begun to flow into the Oregon 
country in a barely perceptible stream. As has been 
said, the governments of Great Britain and the United 
States held the region under joint control—which 
meant practically no control at all. It was a fair field, 
with both Washington and London practically ignorant 
of the value of the vast commonwealths they were 
dealing with so lightly and casually. 

There were Americans, however, who knew some¬ 
thing of the size of the stake to be played for. One 
of these was Marcus Whitman of the Presbyterian 
Board of Missions. He had visited the country once, 
and in 1836 he returned with a party of settlers whose 
ambition was to prove that wagons could cross over 
mountain trails that had hitherto known only the 


Joe Meek 


131 


pressure of horses’ hoofs. On this second trip Dr. 
Whitman was accompanied by his wife, as was his 
associate, Dr. Spalding. 

Word had run ahead of the coming of the mis¬ 
sionaries through the mountains and Meek was in 
the party of trappers that met them on the rough 
trail. The wagon train was winding up a long slope 
when a strange and forbidding party of horsemen 
appeared over the crest of the ridge at their front 
and came whooping down upon them waving their 
guns and firing wildly in the air. Fortunately the 
leaders carried white flags tied to their rifle barrels 
or the colonists might well have drawn together for 
their last stand. At a moderate distance trappers 
and Indians were hardly to be distinguished by the 
untrained eye. 

Meek fell victim to the charms of Mrs. Whitman 
at first glance. This delicately bred Eastern woman 
was nevertheless of a vigorous athletic type and an 
accomplished horsewoman to whom the rough life of 
the prairie and mountain appealed strongly, and for 
Meek it was the beginning of a period of worship 
that was too soon to have its tragic ending. 

It is inevitable that a character like Meek should 
have left behind a host of stories, many of them of 
doubtful truth. Some of them, however, show the 
extravagant, hazardous nature of the man’s life. In 
some ways he was the clown of the mountain men, 
but always the game he played was serious and dan¬ 
gerous, and might at any moment become deadly. The 


132 Boys 9 Own Book of Frontiersmen 

country held its full quota of wild animals and wilder 
men. 

There is a tale of a bear hunt that has the ear¬ 
marks of some of Meek’s own reminiscences of his 
early days. The grizzly attacked and Meek’s gun 
missed fire. He ran, putting a fresh cap on the nipple 
of the rifle as he fled. When he turned, the bear was 
so close on him that he put the muzzle of the gun 
in the bear’s mouth. But old Ephraim was too quick 
for him. As he pulled the trigger the bear struck 
down the muzzle with his paw and the result was a 
minor wound in the body. Meek drew his knife and 
the bear sent it spinning with a blow of his paw. For¬ 
tunately the trapper still had his tomahawk in reserve 
and with that weapon he put an end to the bear. Prob¬ 
ably if the tomahawk had been lost Meek would have 
had a tale to tell of killing the grizzly with his teeth. 

The death of the Indian wife that he had borrowed 
from his friend Sublette did not leave him long in¬ 
consolable. The next one was a Nez Perce. She 
soon wearied of her husband’s wanderings among 
strange tribes and longed for the lodges of her own 
people. A band of missionaries heading west across 
the mountains gave her the opportunity to make her 
way back to her own. Her abandoned husband first 
sought such consolation as fire water was supposed to 
afford and then set off alone in search of the deserter. 
He had to cross a long stretch of dry country where 
any ordinary person would have found trouble in trav¬ 
eling under the best of circumstances. Meek’s circum- 


Joe Meek 


133 


stances of head and tongue were far from the best, 
but he seems to have suffered only slight inconvenience. 

In the middle of the desert he came upon two white 
people, a man and wife who had fallen out from the 
missionary party that was convoying Meek’s wife. The 
husband lay flat on the ground groaning in his despair 
over the death that he was sure was close upon him. 
The wife sat beside him weeping in terror and praying 
for aid. 

Joe Meek did not appear an encouraging answer to 
prayer, but he furnished the tonic the sufferers needed. 
After vainly urging the man to stand up and hit the 
trail again, holding the mountain man’s belief that a 
man was never dead as long as he could crawl, he ad¬ 
dressed himself to the wife. 

“Get on your horse,” he said to her. “You can’t 
save your husband by staying here crying. It’s better 
that one should die than two; and he seems to be a 
worthless dog anyway. Let the Indians have him.” 

The husband’s strength returned as he saw the 
others abandoning him and he was still with them 
when they overtook the mission party. Although Meek 
overtook his wife he seems to have been content to 
let her go her way, and soon after married another 
Nez Perce. This time the union lasted. 

With the exception of the Whitman party Meek 
had little use for the missionaries who were now 
coming into the Oregon country, although years after¬ 
ward he yielded to their persuasions sufficiently to have 
the marriage ceremony performed between himself and 
the Nez Perce who had been his faithful wife for many 


134 Boys y Own Book of Frontiersmen 

years. At one time he pretended to preach to the 
Nez Perces and at the end of his sermon demanded 
the pay his labors deserved. The Nez Perces evi¬ 
dently appreciated the humor if not the labors of 
their kinsman by marriage. At any rate Meek al¬ 
ways insisted that they gave him thirteen horses and 
many furs. Fortunately his sermon has not been 
preserved. 

The days of the trappers were numbered now. The 
beaver were passing and the settler was on all the 
trails. Meek’s last recorded season was with a man 
named Allen near Pierre’s Hole where he had fought 
a great fight with the Blackfeet in his earliest days in 
the mountains. The Blackfeet attacked the two men 
again. Meek managed to hide and from his hole saw 
the Indians capture his companion and kill him by 
slow torture. At night he crawled out and by great 
good luck found two of his horses and made his way 
to safety on the Green River—twenty-six days of 
'solitary travel. 

The year 1840 saw the end of Meek’s career as a 
trapper. An old companion named Newell whom 
he encountered at Fort Hall had read the writing on 
the wall and was bound for the Willamette country in 
Oregon, taking two wagons over for Dr. Whitman 
and the Waiilatpu Mission. He urged Meek to go 
along, saying, “The fur trade is dead in the Rocky 
Mountains. Let us go down to the Willamette and 
take farms.” Meek replied, “I have nothing to be¬ 
gin with but a wife and a baby,” but he went. A 


Joe Meek 135 

daughter by an earlier marriage he had given to Mrs. 
Whitman to be educated at the Mission. 

This was the end of Meek the Trapper and the 
beginning of Meek the Colonist. He differed from 
Kit Carson in that he was always something of a 
politician, while Carson remained the soldier and the 
ranger to the end of his days. 

The first years in Oregon were hard ones. The 
settlers were urged to sow wheat and Meek had no 
money or credit with which to buy seed or plow. The 
first year he helped Newell, who seemed in earnest 
in his desire to be a settler, and then yielded to the 
old lure of the trail and went off with Commodore 
Wilkes as a guide in his exploration of the Columbia 
River. 

Much praise, and most of it well deserved, has 
been given to the Indian for his ability as a guide, but 
men of the Meek stamp and training could and did 
beat the red man at his own game. Probably few 
white men were the superior of the Indian in country 
which the Indian knew, but the white man experienced 
on mountain and wilderness trails could find his way 
through an utterly new district where the Indian would 
quit in disgust. Travelers in the north know that 
the distinction still holds good. 

Most settlers in new regions are poverty-stricken 
and the Oregonians were more so than most. The 
Hudson’s Bay Company was a godsend to many of 
them. It was to the interest of this organization to 
keep out the settlers and hold the country for the 
trader and the trapper, but it stands to their everlast- 


136 Boys 9 Own Book of Frontiersmen 

ing credit that they came to the aid of the struggling 
farmers many times when the missions failed them. 

Meek applied to one mission farm for a cow on 
credit since he had neither money nor trade goods. 
The superintendent suggested that he try the value 
of prayer. Meek guaranteed to pray half an hour 
for a cow if the superintendent would guarantee that 
the prayer would be answered. The report is that 
he got his cow, but there is no record of whether or 
not he won it by prayer. 

The increase of settlement brought two complica¬ 
tions. The first was that the Indians became restless 
as they saw their hold on the land being threatened. 
Such missions as Dr. Whitman’s were forbidden to 
plow or plant. “If you dig the ground, you will dig 
your graves,” the Cayuse Indians said. 

The other trouble was the lack of any form of 
government. The United States still refused to rec¬ 
ognize Oregon as American soil; neither was it defi¬ 
nitely British. The settlers finally took matters in 
their hands under the guise of what was called the 
Wolf Association, formed ostensibly for the purpose 
of offering bounties for the killing of wolves. A com¬ 
mittee reported a loose form of organization for their 
own protection which was adopted by a close vote. 
Meek, naturally being a leading spirit on the American 
side, was rewarded by being appointed sheriff. There 
was no salary attached to the office and no money 
to pay it if there had been. 

Many of the settlers were actually without food or 
shelter or sufficient clothing. One man secured per- 


Joe Meek 


137 


mission to spend the winter in the log schoolhouse on 
condition that he permit religious meetings to be held 
there. He had only one shoe and was much em¬ 
barrassed when at one of the meetings he had to hobble 
across the room with one foot covered by nothing but 
a stocking. 

Meek was no better off than the poorest, but his 
rough, cheerful humor rose over all discomforts. Once 
he had arranged a trip with a neighbor to Willamette 
Falls in a wagon. The neighbor asked him to bring 
some food as he had none in the house. Meek ap¬ 
peared at starting time with all the supplies that his 
establishment could spare—one large raw pumpkin. 
They roasted the pumpkin and made the trip. 

There were only two mills in the whole colony for 
grinding wheat and many farmers were forced to 
travel four to six days to take their grain to mill. 
There was no mail service. Letters were carried across 
the mountains by the courtesy of occasional travelers 
or by the Hudson’s Bay Company packet that went out 
once a year. These and the infrequent ships from the 
coast around Cape Horn were the only ways of piercing 
the darkness that shut the settlers off from their 
eastern homes. 

Such law as there was was largely a makeshift. 
An effort was made to stop the selling of whiskey to 
the Indians, an iniquitous practice that had been in 
existence since the first white traders came into the 
country. An English woman, a Madam Cooper, was 
reported to the Indian agent, Dr. White, as having a 
barrel of whiskey in her possession which she was 


138 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

selling. Dr. White attempted to levy on it and Madam 
Cooper met his arguments with a poker. Then Dr. 
White appealed to Meek as sheriff to try where he 
had failed. When the irate lady appeared again with 
her faithful poker Meek made prompt explanation 
that “as I am not quite so high an authority as Dr. 
White, about a quart will do me.” 

Meek was inclined to sympathize with the Indians 
in the earlier troubles. The Nez Perces were his 
relatives by marriage and his friends by long ex¬ 
perience and he had been half Indian himself for too 
many years not to understand their position. To one 
man who appealed to him to tell him what should be 
done if the Indians attacked, Meek replied with scorn¬ 
ful emphasis, “I think you had better run.” 

The threats came to their bloody climax late in 
1847 . Whitman’s mission was attacked and most of 
the whites were killed, including Dr. and Mrs. Whit¬ 
man. This was a double blow to Joe Meek. Ever 
since that first meeting on the mountain trail, when he 
and his comrades gave rough trapper greeting to the 
missionaries bound across the range, Mrs. Whitman 
had stood to him for all that was fine and high and 
lovely. To hear that she was dead was as though 
some one had told him that all he ever knew of beauty 
was at an end. His own little halfbreed daughter 
was a pupil at the mission and she, too, perished in 
the slaughter. Truly, as the Indians had said, those 
who dug the ground had dug their own graves. 

This was the crowning blow. The settlers deter¬ 
mined to make definite appeal to Washington and 


Joe Meek 


139 


Meek was chosen as their messenger. It was early 
in January of 1848 that he hit the long winter trail 
east across the mountains. John Owens and George 
Ebbarts started with him and four other unnamed 
companions. They stopped on the way to bury the 
bodies of the victims of the massacre and the sight 
must have fired Meek with a new zeal for the hard 
task before him. 

The whole mountain country was humming with 
news of the uprising and hostiles might be met at 
any turn. Two of his companions weakened and 
stopped off at Fort Boise. Meek kept on with the 
others. It is somewhat saddening to learn that a 
part at least of their safety was due to the fact that 
they wore the red belt and the Canadian cap of the 
Hudson’s Bay men. Once again the great Company 
that was trying to hold the territory for England light¬ 
ened the burden of the American invaders. 

Most of the way through the mountains was famil¬ 
iar going to Meek. He had hunted and trapped and 
fought over many miles of it. At Fort Hall he met 
his old friend Bridger, one of the great men of the 
mountain country. Another old comrade of his trap¬ 
ping days whom he found there was Peg-Leg Wilson, 
who had lost a leg in battle with the Crows. The 
wooden leg that replaced the missing member not only 
gave him his nickname but served still another pur¬ 
pose beside its intended one, that of a weapon. Many 
were the stories that were told of the execution that 
he did with this wooden leg as he hopped to battle 
waving it in his strong right arm. 


140 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

There must have been many narrow escapes on the 
way through the dangerous stretches, but the record 
remains of only one or two. Once he and his com¬ 
panions blundered into a Sioux village in the midst 
of a driving snowstorm and got through by the simple 
process of going on, the storm being severe enough to 
keep even the dogs under cover. Provisions ran low 
and Meek afterwards told with great glee of the time 
when their menu consisted of two polecats, roasted on 
the coals. No hardships or dangers could chill the 
rough gayety of this messenger. 

The time from Portland to St. Joe, Missouri, was 
two months, and the messenger reached the latter town 
penniless and ragged, and gaunt with hunger. The 
lack of money meant little to him who had never known 
the jingle of coins in his purse. He remembered that 
the father of one of his Oregon friends lived in St. 
Joe and sought him straightway. The result was 
funds enough to pass him on to St. Louis by steam¬ 
boat. 

From this city the route was by steamboat down the 
Mississippi and up the Ohio to Pittsburgh. Two rival 
boats were lying side by side at the wharves with steam 
up. Selecting the one whose appearance pleased him 
most—perhaps the fact that its name was Declaration 
may have helped in his choice—he stationed himself 
at the head of the gangplank and began to invite 
passengers to come on. 

“I am the man from Oregon with dispatches to the 
President of these United States that you all read 
about in this morning’s paper. Come on aboard, ladies 



JOE MEEK AT THE STEAMSHIP LANDING 




























Joe Meek 


141 


and gentlemen, if you want to hear the news from 
Oregon. Don’t stop thar, looking at my old wolfskin 
cap, but just come aboard and hear what I’ve got to 
tell.” The captain, with an eye for the picturesque 
opportunity, gave him free passage to Pittsburgh. 

Before the boat reached Pittsburgh they had heard 
Meek’s tale many times, and a rare mingling of truth 
and fiction it must have been, for Joe never let any¬ 
thing spoil a good story. Besides he was of the 
breed that deals largely in exaggeration and rude fig¬ 
ures of speech. The truth of his life was strange 
enough to these voyagers on the Ohio, and besides 
he brought them news of a tragedy that was finally 
to stir the sleepy politicians in Washington to action. 
A sample of his style of speech was his reply in later 
years to the British naval officer who said to him, 
“You must have been in this country a long time, 
Mr. Meek.” “When I came to this country Mount 
Hood was a hole in the ground,” said Meek. 

The boat was delayed and Meek reached Pittsburgh 
too late for the regular stage for the next leg of the 
trip. He demanded a special stage and horses. The 
agent scanned his ragged clothes, his shaggy beard, 
his wolfskin cap and blanket coat and rather haughtily 
demanded his name. Meek’s reply was equally haughty. 
“I am Joe Meek, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister 
Plenipotentiary from the Republic of Oregon to the 
Court of the United States.” He got the stage and 
grandly invited the other passengers to share it with 
him. 

His stay in Washington was a nine days’ wonder. 


142 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

Everywhere he was pointed out as Joe Meek of Ore¬ 
gon and no one enjoyed the stir more than Joe Meek. 
But under cover of the rude joking he did the job 
that he had been sent to do and before he left the 
city, Oregon was United States territory and Meek ac¬ 
companied the new governor, Lane, as the first United 
States marshal. 

There are numerous stories about his performances 
in that office, many of them doubtless circulated in¬ 
dustriously by Meek himself. Many of them seem 
to give the impression that he was little better than 
a clown. Nothing could be farther from the truth. 
Under all the fooling and horseplay was a strong 
sense of duty and a personal courage without flaw. 

In 1850 the Indian chiefs responsible for the Whit¬ 
man massacre were tried and condemned to be hanged. 
The territorial secretary, an old friend of Meek, be¬ 
came acting governor during Lane’s absence for a short 
time in California and intimated to Meek that he in¬ 
tended to commute their sentence to life imprison¬ 
ment. Meek’s reply left no doubt where the United 
States marshal stood. “As far as Meek is concerned 
he would do anything for you ... I have got in my 
pocket the death warrant of them Indians, signed by 
Governor Lane. The marshal will execute them men 
as certain as the day arrives.” And he did. 

Court procedure was informal in those days, as were 
all the other operations of the government. But even 
Meek’s sense of judicial dignity was offended when he 
saw an Indian squaw plodding stolidly upstairs to the 
judge’s quarters in the little courthouse and when she 


Joe Meek 


143 


refused to stop for his order he dragged her back by 
the leg. This, in turn, offended the judge, who fined 
him fifty dollars, remarking, “I must keep up the dig¬ 
nity of this court if I have to pay all the fines myself.” 

“All right, Judge,” said Meek, “as I am the proper 
disbursing officer, you can pay that fifty dollars to me, 
and I’ll take it now.” 

One of his official duties was to act as witness to 
the qualifications of foreigners intending to become 
American citizens. After certifying to two hundred 
in one day, he struck. “Two hundred lies are enough 
for me. I swore that all those mountain men were of 
‘good moral character,’ and I never knew a moun¬ 
tain man of that description in my life.” 

He could be stiff-necked on occasion. Years before 
he became marshal he had been ordered ashore by the 
captain of a British ship in the harbor at Portland. 
Meek remembered, and when information was laid 
against this same ship and captain on a charge of 
smuggling he boarded her again with high glee. The 
captain was full of courtesy and desire to conciliate 
the representative of Uncle Sam. “Haven’t I met you 
before?” he inquired politely. 

“I was nothing but Joe Meek then, and you ordered 
me ashore,” said Meek stiffly. “I am now Colonel 
Joseph L. Meek, United States Marshal for the Ter¬ 
ritory of Oregon, and you, sir, are only a damned 
smuggler. Go ashore, sir.” 

The public career of Meek ended in 1856 , but he 
lived many years in the colony and later in the state 
of his adoption. He had seen the Union Jack fly 


144 Boys* Own Book of Frontiersmen 

over his mountain country and he had seen the Stars 
and Stripes take its place. He lived through the hard 
days when secession sought to place the Stars and 
Bars in the southern half of the United States. Vir¬ 
ginian though he was and ardent believer in the right 
of every community—and every man—to make its own 
mistakes, he had no sympathy with the attempt to 
break the Union apart. 

When he died, in 1875 , the day of the railroad was 
dawning and the Old West that he had known in his 
riotous youth had long since passed. He was a shining 
example of a type of pioneer that was more common 
than we sometimes realize. Rough, hard to control, 
unbridled in many of his actions, hard-living, hard- 
drinking, hard-fighting, few men played a more w T orthy 
part in the founding of the Northwest commonwealth. 
Much of the joking and horseplay was mere surface 
bubbling of high spirits, a working off of excess en¬ 
ergy. When serious work was to be done, and es¬ 
pecially work that called for courage and endurance 
of a high order, no one called twice for Old Joe Meek 
of Oregon. 


PETER CARTWRIGHT 


THE FRONTIER PREACHER 

PETER” Cartwright, as he was wont to call 
himself, was probably the best known if not the 
most important of the pioneer preachers of middle- 
western America in the early part of the last century. 
He was born in Virginia in 1785 , right on the heels 
of the Revolutionary War, and before the Constitu¬ 
tion had cemented the loose confederacy of colonies 
into a government. His father had been a soldier in 
the Continental Army and soon after the birth of 
Peter the family joined the westward movement that 
was setting steadily across the mountains into Ken¬ 
tucky. 

Echoes of the long and bloody Indian war were 
still to be heard in Kentucky, but the real fighting was 
over. The settlers of the Cartwright time might have 
occasional trouble with prowling, thieving stragglers, 
but the dangers that Boone and his men had known 
were past. But there were hardships in plenty and 
young Cartwright grew up to the hard work and 
severely plain fare of a pioneer farm. 

In his autobiography Cartwright emphasizes his 
wickedness as a youth, but this can hardly be taken 
seriously since he was only sixteen years old when he 
145 


146 Boys > Own Book of Frontiersmen 

was converted and joined the Methodist Church. This 
happened at the beginning of a great religious revival 
throughout Kentucky, extending over into Ohio and 
Indiana. It was also the beginning of the camp meet¬ 
ings that for many years characterized the work of 
the Methodist Church. 

The first of these of which there is record was held 
at a place called Cane Ridge in Kentucky and was at¬ 
tended by thousands of people. From the accounts, 
the entire population of two or three counties must 
have deserted their homes and flocked to the camp 
ground. These meetings were literally what the name 
states, camp meetings. The services were held in groves 
—later in enormous tents or tabernacles—and the 
people lived in tents or huts scattered among the trees. 
Services began early in the morning and lasted until 
late at night. At Cane Ridge the crowd was so large 
that pulpits were set up at various places and some¬ 
times as many as six or eight preachers were exhorting 
at the same time. 

It was a rude, hard time, and the religious services 
were of the same character as the lives of the people. 
Conversion was a violent affair, often attended by 
hysteria and testified to by shouting and sometimes 
by actual convulsions. It is difficult to write of the 
religion of this time without seeming to criticize or to 
condemn. Cartwright himself was at times skeptical 
of the value of the excesses that attended the revivals, 
and throughout his ministry, which lasted for over 
fifty years and covered most of Kentucky and Illinois 
and the greater part of Indiana and Ohio, he brought 


Peter Cartwright 147 

to his work a saving grace of shrewd common sense 
and humor. 

At one time an “exercise” called the jerks broke 
out in some of the meetings. This was literally what 
it was. People afflicted would stand up in the midst 
of the meeting and be “seized with a convulsive jerking 
all over, which they could not by any possibility avoid, 
and the more they resisted the more they jerked.” 
The ailment does not seem to have been confined to 
the saved, but to have afflicted saints and sinners alike. 

In one of the cases that Cartwright mentions, a local 
tough, famed as a drunkard even in a community where 
drinking was general, was attacked with this jerking. 
He ran out of the meeting and seized a small tree, 
swearing that he would drink the jerks to death. The 
jerks were so violent that he was unable to get his 
bottle to his mouth. In his convulsions he broke the 
flask against a tree, at which the jerks so increased in 
violence that he “snapped his neck, fell and soon 
expired, with his mouth full of cursing and bitterness.” 

Cartwright’s active work as a preacher seems to 
have begun within a year after his conversion, and for 
a long time he was known as the boy preacher. His 
first license was as an “exhorter.” Whatever may 
have been the titles that he bore through his long 
career, it is certain that all his life he remained an 
exhorter. 

These camp meetings were not only the meeting 
places of the converted and those who desired conver¬ 
sion, but also of the rowdies of the neighborhood who 
sought only excitement. The chronicles of the time are 


148 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

full of cases of disturbance in the meetings and much 
of Cartwright’s own story is taken up with accounts 
of the squelching of such disturbers of the peace. 

The standards of education for the ministry of that 
day were naturally not very high. In fact throughout 
his life Cartwright indulged in many flings at the min¬ 
isters who were turned out from colleges and 
theological seminaries. Once he recounts his experi¬ 
ence with one of “these Latin and Greek scholars.” 

“In order to bring me into contempt in public com¬ 
pany he addressed me in Greek. In my younger days 
I had learned considerable of German. I listened to 
him as if I had understood it all, and then replied in 
Dutch. This he knew nothing about, neither did he 
understand Hebrew. He concluded that I had 
answered him in Hebrew, and immediately caved in 
and stated to the company that I was the first educated 
Methodist preacher he ever saw.” 

Cartwright’s own education for the ministry con¬ 
sisted of a winter in a school kept by a minister who 
taught “all the branches of a common English educa¬ 
tion and also the dead languages.” It was at this 
school that his long series of bouts with the scoffers 
began. Some of the students objected to the prayer 
meetings that were held by Cartwright and some of 
his friends, and two or three of them decoyed him to 
the bank of a creek under pretense of wanting him to 
pray with them. Cartwright was suspicious and when 
they tried to attack him he threw one of them over the 
bank into a deep hole and in the scuffle that followed 
with the other both exhorter and sinner rolled over the 


Peter Cartwright 149 

edge and had to swim out. That was the end of his 
education. 

The Methodist Church of that day had no fixed 
ministers. All of *them were literally pilgrims, travel¬ 
ing over the whole district, called the circuit, and 
preaching where opportunity offered, usually in cabins 
or, if the weather permitted, in the open air. Horses 
were the only means of travel then and. the preachers 
were known as circuit riders. The districts were large 
and frequently three or four weeks would be required 
to make the .rounds. The pay was beggarly. Cart¬ 
wright’s pay for his first three months was six dollars. 
He announces that in that time he had brought twenty- 
five converts into the church and had preached every 
day but two. 

It was a robust as well as a rude Christianity that 
was preached then. Not only were the meetings likely 
to be disturbed by local rowdies looking for excitement, 
but the preachers were also much disturbed by the 
growing fashionableness of the people. Luxury as 
well as education was creeping in. 

In Ohio at one meeting two young ladies from Bal¬ 
timore, much bedecked with jewelry, came to the 
mourners’ bench, as the space for converts in front 
of the altar was called. Cartwright states with the air 
of one defying contradiction that they must have had 
on at least one or two hundred dollars’ worth of rings, 
earrings, bracelets, gold chains, lockets, etc. These 
they stripped off and handed to Cartwright, saying, 
“We have no more use for these idols.” 

Ruffled shirts worn by the gentlemen of fashion 


150 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

were also regarded as a stumblingblock in the way 
of salvation. At a meeting in Tennessee a man so 
dressed was led to the mourners’ bench. Cartwright 
was praying with him when he jumped to his feet, 
tore off his ruffles, and threw them in the straw in 
which he stood. “And in less than two minutes God 
blessed his soul, and he sprang to his feet, loudly 
praising God.” 

Another thing that greatly disturbed the early 
leaders was the tendency toward instrumental music, 
pews in churches, and other means of making worship 
an easier exercise. Cartwright proudly says, “The 
Methodists universally opposed these ideas; and the 
illiterate Methodist preachers actually set the world 
on fire (the American world at least) while they (the 
preachers' who supported such advanced ideas) were 
lighting their matches.” And the claim has an abun¬ 
dance of evidence to support it. 

in length would not have enjoyed the sermons that 

Those who suffer now under services of a full hour 
Cartwright and his brethren preached. At one camp 
meeting a concerted attempt was made by a mob to 
break up the meeting. The magistrates who were 
present were powerless. In fact, some of them seem 
to have helped the disturbers. Cartwright finally left 
his pulpit and attacked the ringleaders. 

“An old and drunken magistrate came up to me and 
ordered me to let my prisoner go. I told him I should 
not. He swore if I would not, he would knock me 
down. I told him to crack away. Then the drunken 
justice made a pass at me; but I parried the stroke 


Peter Cartwright 151 

and seized him by the collar and hair of the head, and 
fetching him a sudden jerk forward, brought him to 
the ground and jumped on him. . . . 

“Just at this moment the ringleader of the mob and 
I met; he made three passes at me, intending to knock 
me down. The last time he struck at me, by the force 
of his own effort he threw the side of his face toward 
me. It seemed at that moment I had not power to 
resist temptation, and I struck a sudden blow on the 
ear and dropped him to the earth.” 

This quotation gives a better picture than could be 
offered by any one not a witness of the conditions 
under which the preachers of that time did their work. 

Up to that time the meeting had been a failure. And 
there was a sequel. On Sunday morning after the riot 
Cartwright began to preach. “In about thirty minutes 
the power of God fell on the congregation in such a 
manner as is seldom seen; the people fell in every di¬ 
rection. It was supposed that not less than three hun¬ 
dred fell like dead men in mighty battle. . . . Loud 
wailing went up to heaven from sinners for mercy, 
and a general shout from Christians, so that the noise 
was heard afar off.” 

This meeting lasted continuously from early Sunday 
morning until late on Tuesday. 

About this time Cartwright was transferred to a 
new field, among the Yankees of Ohio. His new cir¬ 
cuit was about three hundred miles around and he was 
forced to cross the Ohio River four times in making 
the complete circuit. He had no settled home or 
church and all his days were spent in the pulpit or the 


152 Boys' Own Book of Frontiersmen 

saddle. It happens that this new circuit was settled 
largely from New England and Cartwright went to 
the new field in considerable fear as he had heard many 
dismal stories. Among other things these Yankees 
were supposed to live largely on pumpkins, molasses, 
fat meat, and bohea tea. Also they hated long 
sermons. 

He was not wholly disappointed in his fears. These 
descendants of the Puritans had retained much of their 
ancestors’ abilities in argument and in stubborn stick¬ 
ing to their own opinions, and Cartwright was soon 
glad to get back to his own people in Kentucky. 

It was a time of strange beliefs and many new 
movements were constantly being started. Among 
them were the New Lights, the Halcyons, the 
Dunkers, Primitive Methodists, etc. It is a little sur¬ 
prising, though, to find Cartwright listing the Baptists 
and Presbyterians as among his chief opponents. It 
was the old war of dogma being fought over again 
on the soil of the New West. The Baptists held rigidly 
to a belief in the necessity of baptism by immersion 
and Cartwright makes frequent and scornful reference 
to their attempts to swim into heaven. His chief 
objection to the Presbyterians seems to have been their 
belief in an educated ministry. 

All of this was fuel to the fire that was burning in 
the young exhorter and he welcomed every chance to 
debate with his enemies, particularly on doctrinal 
matters such as the damnation of infants, the power 
of baptism, and the character and evidence of salvation. 

Of course such arguments seldom had much relation 


Peter Cartwright 153 

to reason or fact. Catch phrases were used with 
great effect and the man who could quote Scripture 
with greatest fluency usually won. One point of dif¬ 
ference between the Baptists and Methodists at that 
time was over infant baptism, which the Methodists 
believed in and practiced. Historically speaking, this 
was probably a relic from the old Methodist connec¬ 
tion with the Church of England in the days of the 
Wesleys. Cartwright knew little about this and fought 
for infant baptism as sturdily as for any other point 
on which he believed salvation depended. 

To a Baptist opponent who contended that there 
was no scriptural warrant for infant baptism, he 
replied: 

“Do you believe that all children are saved, and go 
to heaven, and that there is not one infant in hell?” 

“Certainly I do,” said his opponent. 

“Well, if there are no children in hell, and all chil¬ 
dren dying in minority go to heaven, is not that church 
that has no children in it more like hell than heaven?” 

This was a fair sample of the doctrinal arguments 
of the time—and possibly of other times. Of this 
particular opponent Cartwright relates that he after¬ 
wards joined the Campbellites; then left them and 
returned to the Baptist Church. Finally he moved to 
Missouri and died. Cartwright expresses the pious 
but doubtful hope that his end was peaceful. 

In a new country with no roads worth calling roads 
and few taverns except of the rudest, wildest sort, the 
life of the traveling preacher was no easier than that 
of the poorest wanderer. Many times Cartwright 


154 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

came to his appointment, as the preaching engagement 
was called, to find that no preparation had been made 
for him and no congregation was there. 

On one occasion his only listener was a one-eyed 
stranger. Nevertheless Cartwright preached for three 
quarters of an hour and then called on the “congrega¬ 
tion” to join him in singing and in prayer. It devel¬ 
oped later that the stranger was a Presbyterian, but 
he appears to have attended to his part of the service 
manfully and for weeks afterward circulated the story 
of the meeting through the neighborhood so that when 
Cartwright came again he found the whole hillside 
covered with horses and wagons and the church packed. 

The man who could not adapt himself to whatever 
conditions arose and at the same time stick to the task 
that he had set himself did not last long in the Church 
in that day. At one time Cartwright found a dance 
going on in a tavern where he and a companion stopped 
for the night. Dancing, of course, was contrary to 
the Methodist Discipline, but the preacher sat quietly 
watching the dancers. 

An attractive young lady presently walked up to the 
quiet stranger and asked him if he would dance the 
next dance with her. Cartwright rose, took her arm, 
and walked out on the floor. Before the dance started 
he held up his hand for attention and announced that 
it was never his practice to attempt any undertaking 
of importance without first asking God’s blessing upon 
it. With the words he dropped to his knees and began 
to pray. At first the others were aghast, apparently 
not able to understand the queer animal that had come 


Peter Cartwright 155 

among them. Then others joined him, including the 
young lady whose hand he still held. 

This was the beginning of a meeting that lasted all 
night. Cartwright exhorted the dancers, led them in 
prayer, inspired them with hymns, and before morning 
fifteen of them declared that they had seen the light. 
Cartwright organized them into a local church, ap¬ 
pointed a leader, promised to send them a preacher, 
ate his breakfast, and went his way to his next 
appointment. 

There was no middle road or easy course for the 
traveling preacher. The duel was still the accepted 
code of “gentlemen” and many a wearer of ruffles and 
broadcloth was not above indulging in a rough-and- 
tumble barroom fight. One of the leaders of local 
society in a Kentucky community declared that Cart¬ 
wright had insulted his son and that if he had thought 
there was any chance of acceptance he would send the 
preacher a challenge. Cartwright calmly promised 
to accept if a challenge was sent and the major 
promptly issued the invitation to the field of honor. 

“Very well, I’ll fight you,” said Cartwright. “And 
since I suppose it is my right to choose the weapons 
with which we are to fight we will step over here into 
this lot and get a couple of cornstalks; I think I can 
finish you with one.” 

That ended the duel. 

Probably the greatest fame that came to Cartwright 
was the result of his work in Illinois. This began in 
1823 when Illinois had been only some five years a 
state. The northern half of the state was still mostly 


156 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

Indian territory with the exception of the post at 
Chicago, until lately Fort Dearborn. The country was 
open prairie, broken with groves along the streams, 
and roads were few. Traveling was mostly on horse¬ 
back and the usual custom was to go from point to 
point of woods across the prairie, holding the general 
direction by sun or compass. 

His old enemies of Kentucky pursued him even here. 
At one of his first meetings a New Light preacher 
cited a recent downpour of rain as a proof that much 
water was necessary in baptism. “Not at all,” said 
Cartwright. “The Lord sent that rain to prove that 
baptism is by pouring and not by immersion.” 

If Cartwright thought he knew something about the 
hardships of backwoods life and travel from his ex¬ 
periences in Kentucky, Illinois soon taught him that 
he had much to learn. Shortly after his arrival his 
district was enlarged to take in the whole length of 
the state from the mouth of the Ohio to Galena in the 
extreme northwest corner. This was a total length of 
over three hundred miles, a territory that he was re¬ 
quired to cover four times a year. Travel was still by 
horseback, with his Bible and the few extra clothes 
that he could carry in the pockets of his saddlebags. 

There were no bridges over the larger streams and 
few ferries. His usual practice in crossing rivers was 
to strike up or down stream until he found a tree fallen 
across or driftwood lodged at a turn. Then he would 
strip, carry his clothes and saddle across on the log 
or drift, return and swim his horse over, dress and 
go on till he struck another stream. In the spring 


Peter Cartwright 157 

wide stretches of prairie were under water so that for 
miles he would be riding through a shallow lake. 

Houses were few and taverns still fewer so that 
many nights were passed in the open. Fire would be 
made with flint and steel and he would spend the night 
with no company but his horse and only such scraps 
of food as his saddlebags happened to contain. Many 
times he supped and breakfasted on the hope of what 
he would find at the next house. 

Scoffers were no less annoying and persistent here 
than in his earlier experience. He tells of one case 
near Springfield where a couple of young men and a 
young lady riding in a buggy along a muddy road per¬ 
sisted in keeping ahead of his tired horse and imitat¬ 
ing the shouts of the mourners at a revival meeting. 
First one of the young men would stand up and drive, 
shouting, “God has blessed my soul. Hallelujah! 
Glory to God 1” Then the other would jump up, snatch 
the lines, and shout, “Glory to God! Another sinner’s 
down. Pray on, brother! Pray on, brother!” 

This kept up for some time till they struck an es¬ 
pecially deep mudhole. The wheels of the buggy col¬ 
lided with a stump in the middle of it and the buggy 
nearly upset. The occupants jumped to save them¬ 
selves and landed on all fours in the mire. As they 
were crawling out, smeared from head to foot, Cart¬ 
wright rode up to the edge of the hole and sang out, 
“Glory to God! Glory to God! Hallelujah! Another 
sinner’s down! Glory, Hallelujah!” 

Then he read them a brief lecture on respect for 


158 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

religion and good manners to their fellow man and 
rode off. 

Those were commonplaces in the life of Peter 
Cartwright, pioneer preacher. In his more than fifty 
years of preaching, that ended only with his death in 
1872 , he knew no ease or rest. His income was never 
equal to what would be regarded in these days as 
starvation wages for the meanest kind of service. At 
the beginning, unmarried preachers received a maxi¬ 
mum of eighty dollars a year—if they could get it, as 
they usually did not. Married preachers had a some¬ 
what larger allowance. 

He saw his family—there were nine children—only 
at the wide intervals that his constant travel about his 
great district permitted. His pay was almost always 
in arrears, the total shortage in the course of his life 
being about $ 5 , 000 , which was a serious amount to 
him. This was eked out in a small way by the sale 
of books published by the then infant Methodist Book 
Concern. Marriage fees amounted to only some five 
hundred dollars in his whole experience and there were 
a few presents of money and clothing. 

He himself estimates that he received into the 
Methodist Church on probation and by letter some 
ten thousand people and that he baptized in the neigh¬ 
borhood of twelve thousand. In his autobiography he 
estimates that in the fifty-three years of his service up 
to that time he had preached at least fourteen thousand 
six hundred sermons, not counting funeral sermons 
and impromptu addresses in taverns, on steamboats, 
and in private homes, wherever the opportunity offered. 


Peter Cartwright 159 

In addition he found time to serve a term in the 
Illinois legislature and to run for Congress. In the 
latter case his opponent was Abraham Lincoln. In 
spite of being a political foe of Lincoln his hatred of 
slavery was almost as great as was the Emancipator’s. 
Years before the Civil War he saw the crisis coming 
and struck many blows against the strife and disunion 
that slavery brought even into the church. Fortunately 
he lived to see the issue settled although the division 
between the Methodist Church North and South lasted 
years after his death. 

Peter Cartwright was a pioneer of pioneers. He 
was of the same stock as the Virginians who led the 
way across the mountains, blood brother with Daniel 
Boone, George Rogers Clark, and Simon Kenton. 
Where they fought Indians and renegades and subdued 
the wilderness, he waged war on sin, shiftlessness, in¬ 
temperance, and still had strength and time for some 
telling blows at growing political evils and for more 
than a few slaps at what he conceived to be heresy and 
blasphemy in other creeds. 

He was hard, narrow, and unyielding in his faith, 
but broad, humane, and with a tolerant sense of humor 
in his daily relations with other men. He bows to no 
man of all that glorious company of pioneers in the 
courage that he brought to his share of the frontier 
work. Sometimes the demands that he must make on 
his bravery were greater even than those his fighting 
brothers met, for ridicule and obloquy are harder for 
most of us to face than Indian arrows or wild beasts. 

In time, the rowdies of the settlements learned to 


160 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

respect his ready wit and sharp tongue and to realize 
that the man who tried conclusions with Peter Cart¬ 
wright must have more than bluff and swagger. And 
if the disturber stooped to threats and the waving of 
fists he was likely to find the circuit rider of Illinois 
ready for him there, too. There was nothing meek 
or retiring about the religion that Old Peter Cartwright 
preached or the way he preached it. 


WILD BILL HICKOK 


THE KING OF THE GUNMEN 

r | V HERE is one frontiersman almost of our own 
-■* time whose career has probably been the model 
for most of the dime novels of the Diamond Dick 
variety, at least of those that were not inspired by 
Buffalo Bill. That was Wild Bill Hickok. 

Around Wild Bill’s name has grown up a body 
of romance, of tradition, of fiction, and of plain lie, 
so that to separate the true from the false is beyond 
the power of the student of frontier records. To this 
mild-mannered, courteous gentleman have been at¬ 
tributed so many killings that even if we discount them 
fifty per cent there are still enough to justify the lavish 
use of red ink in these pages. 

To attempt any such discount is a thankless task. 
He lived in the midst of events that held human life 
of small account and there is abundant proof that he 
often seemed to value his own least of all. His time 
might be called the violent period of the American 
frontier. The country in which he spent most of his 
life, along the Kansas and Missouri border, was the 
scene of lawless warfare when he appeared there and 
the only verdict that surely stood was that of the six- 
shooter and the rifle. Therefore, it is little wonder 
161 


162 Boys* Own Book of Frontiersmen 

that he fell in with the prevailing practice. A con¬ 
siderable part of his fame is due to the fact he ex¬ 
celled in an art of which most of his fellows were 
masters and followed it with courage and a certain 
rough chivalry. 

Hickok was an exception to the rule that most of 
the foremost frontier characters were of Southern 
origin. His own descent is traced back to the moun¬ 
tain state of Vermont by way of the comparative peace 
of Illinois. It was in 1837 that he was born in La 
Salle County in the latter state, one of six children. 
It is customary, of course, to find in the early life of 
such characters evidence of traits that are to show 
themselves later. Accordingly we are told with every 
appearance of truth that young Hickok’s library con¬ 
sisted of Peters’ “Life of Kit Carson” and “The Trap¬ 
per’s Guide.” The name that was given him by his 
parents was James Butler. “Wild Bill” was a later 
acquisition. 

His first job was as a driver on the towpath of 
the then new Illinois-Michigan canal. It was also the 
occasion of his first fight. We know at least that he 
was less than eighteen years old, but he welcomed a 
fight even then. His opponent was one of the other 
drivers, reputed to be a rough customer. In the argu¬ 
ment both drivers rolled down into the canal and the 
other man was so far gone when they were hauled 
out of the water that young Hickok won by unanimous 
consent. 

As he grew toward young manhood the clouds along 
the Kansas-Missouri border thickened. Kansas was 


Wild Bill Hickok 


163 


not yet a state and the question of slaves or no slaves 
in the new territory was being decided by force of 
arms. Both friends and foes of slavery sent armed 
bands into the region and neutrality was impossible. 
Strangers were strangers only until their feeling 
toward slavery was discovered. Then they were 
comrades or corpses. 

Into this whirlpool of blood and violence young 
Hickok came in 1855 , a boy of eighteen. Arriving at 
Leavenworth, he joined Jim Lane from Indiana who 
had an anti-slavery force under his command called 
the Red Legs. The boy’s tall, slender build soon 
earned for him the nickname of Shanghai Bill and 
his skill with the pistol and rifle gained the respectful 
admiration of the genial ruffians with whom he was 
associated. 

After a year of desultory fighting, working, and 
loafing in Eastern Kansas he took up a claim with 
every intention of becoming a plain rancher. His 
career with the Red Legs, however, had earned him 
enough enemies, so after his cabin had been burned 
twice he concluded that the Fates had not intended 
him for a quiet life at his own fireside and gave up 
his claim for good. 

There followed a couple of years of varied activity. 
He was a driver for the Overland Stage Company, and 
a reckless one too, whose delight it was to bring the 
stage into the frontier towns along the route at a 
pounding gallop, “to take the cricks out of the pas¬ 
sengers’ legs,” as the driver was careful to explain. 
The Indians on the Sweetwater in what is now Okla- 


164 Boys 1 Own Book of Frontiersmen 

homa went off the reservation and the operation of 
the stages became too unhealthy for even that dare¬ 
devil time. Bill filled in the gap by getting up a vol¬ 
unteer force to “clear the Injuns out.” There was 
one fight in which the Indians were so effectually 
“cleared” that those who were able to travel were 
only too glad to go back on the reservation. 

Hickok had enough of stage driving and tried 
freighting for a time for Russell, Majors and Waddell. 
This was the big firm in overland trail transportation 
in the years immediately before the building of the 
first transcontinental railroads. It was a rough game 
and none but two-fisted men survived in it. While 
driving a bull team, as the freighters’ wagons were 
called, Hickok was badly mauled by a bear in the 
Socorro Range. He won the duel with the aid of 
his knife, but two months’ rest was necessary to re¬ 
cover from the attentions of his burly antagonist. 

It was early in i 860 that he came back to the com¬ 
pany, this time to take what he fondly imagined was an 
easy job as station keeper at Rock Creek in Kansas. 
The station keeper’s duty was to take care of the extra 
stock and to help in changing teams, cooking for the 
freighters laying over at the station, and otherwise 
looking after the interests of the company in the 
neighborhood. The ease of the job was entirely in 
Hickok’s imagination. 

A gang of border ruffians headed by the McCandlas 
brothers had their headquarters near the stage station. 
Although the territory was nominally anti-slavery by 
this time, there was considerable pro-slavery send- 


Wild Bill Hickok 


165 


ment and when the war broke out the McCandlas gang 
promptly claimed authorization from the Confederate 
Government to seize horses for the use of the Southern 
armies. It is doubtful if any of the horses so ap¬ 
propriated ever saw Southern service, nor did it matter 
much to their former owners. Authorized or not, 
such acts looked to them strangely like common horse 
stealing, but there was not sufficient force at hand to 
keep the raiders in order. 

Hickok had an associate at the station and both 
of them kept a sharp eye out for the horse “agents.” 
As luck would have it, Hickok was alone in the sta¬ 
tion hut when ten of the gang, with the redoubtable 
McCandlas brothers at their head, rode up and de¬ 
manded the company stock that was locked in the log 
barn. Hickok refused and barricaded himself in the 
hut. 

The battle that followed was Homeric. The door 
of the hut was broken in and Jim McCandlas fell dead 
across the threshold with a bullet through his brain. 
The others charged in over his body. Their numbers 
made it more difficult for themselves than for Hickok 
in that narrow room. Hemmed in by lack of space 
and handicapped by the danger of hitting each other, 
they blocked their own efforts to reach the station 
keeper, who backed into a corner and fired and struck 
without ceasing or missing. 

Such a fight could last but a few minutes and at 
the end of it six of the gang were dead and two others 
had wounds from which they later died. Bill had 
seven bullet wounds, a fractured skull, and knife 


166 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

wounds and bruises too numerous to count. He was 
a year in recovering and beside his scars, he brought out 
of the shambles of that station cabin the nickname of 
Wild Bill that stuck to him to the end of his life and 
by which he will be known as long as frontier annals 
are remembered. 

The deeds ascribed to him during the Civil War 
would fill several chapters by themselves, but they 
have no place in his story as a frontiersman. He 
was a spy with Curtis in the struggle of the North 
to hold Missouri and by his dare-devil bravery and 
skill undoubtedly rendered great service to the Union 
arms. He was captured by the Confederates and his 
identity disclosed by a man who had known him in 
Kansas. In consequence he was condemned to be shot 
the next day. 

During the night he killed the sentry on guard over 
him and escaped to the Union lines, according to the 
story, just in time to give valuable information to 
General Curtis. We are sure at least that he escaped. 
He was a sharpshooter at the battle of Pea Ridge 
and is reported to have killed thirty-five men, most 
of them officers. 

After the war was over Bill went with General 
Curtis into Kansas to put down a threatened Indian 
uprising. A renegade Sioux, Conquering Bear, pre¬ 
tending to show Bill where the hostile Choctaws were 
camped, led him into an ambush instead. Bill es¬ 
caped, after killing three of the enemy, and made his 
way back to Curtis and asked leave to camp on Con¬ 
quering Bear’s trail. When he finally found that 


Wild Bill Hickok 


167 


worthy he challenged him to a duel with pistols or 
knives. The Indian, knowing Bill’s skill with the 
pistol, chose the knife. Bill was badly wounded in 
the fight that lasted nearly half an hour, but the Indian 
was dead and honor was fully satisfied. 

After a winter of trapping on the Niobrara in Ne¬ 
braska, Bill drifted back to Springfield, Missouri, with 
a pocketful of money and no plans except to spend 
his surplus. At that time Springfield had a 
considerable reputation—as a center for gambling, 
an occupation to which Bill was much addicted 
in his leisure, of which he now had an abun¬ 
dance. 

By this time Bill’s reputation had spread the length 
of the old border and there were many men who were 
anxious to test him and to discover the exact degree 
of his badness. One such seems to have been David 
Tutt, a gambler and all-round gunman. Bill rose 
from the game one night owing this Tutt twenty-five 
dollars. He returned with more funds and offered 
to pay the twenty-five. Tutt claimed forty and seized 
Bill’s watch, saying that he would walk across the 
public square at nine o’clock the next morning carrying 
the watch in his hand as a proof that he had tamed the 
wild man of the Kansas border. Bill dismissed the 
subject with the remark, “You’ll never get across that 
place unless dead men can walk.” 

The next morning Tutt kept his word sharp at nine 
o’clock. Both men fired at the same second, but Bill 
fired a fraction the first. The coroner’s jury had no 
difficulty in finding a verdict of self-defense. 


168 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

In spite of the verdict Bill decided that the air of 
this part of the country was no more healthy for him 
than it should be and drifted on to Nebraska. Most 
of his extremely active life was a succession of fights 
and moves, although there is every indication that he 
fought fairly according to the frontier code and never 
with a man who hadn’t a full chance for his own life. 
In the language of the country, Bill’s safety lay in 
“beating the other fellow to the draw.” 

His next exploit of record was in Nebraska, where a 
gang of four cowboys in a prairie saloon, recognizing 
him, began to bait him into a fight. Not much teas¬ 
ing was required and Bill challenged all four of them 
to simultaneous combat. He killed one with the first 
shot, but his own right arm was broken and he was 
forced to finish out the affair with his left hand. In 
spite of this handicap he killed two others and badly 
wounded the fourth. 

Bill’s reputation as a scout was now firmly estab¬ 
lished, and when Generals Primrose and Carr went 
out to put the Cheyennes back on their reservation 
Bill was with them. He rode in the van of the fight 
that followed near Antelope Hills in what is now 
Oklahoma, and was credited with the killing of Chief 
Black Kettle. In this fight, however, he received still 
another wound, this time from a spear, and had an¬ 
other enforced vacation. 

Some of the frontier towns were beginning to take 
thought of law and order, and a difficult problem they 
found it in cases. Hays City was an important cattle¬ 
shipping point on the new railroad that had been built 


Wild Bill Hickok 


169 


through Kansas, and in 1869 Bill took the post of 
town marshal. It was a tough town. The principal 
customers were cattle men, many of them just in from 
the long drive up from Texas with their money burn¬ 
ing holes in their pockets, and the principal diversions 
were drinking and gambling. 

Many of the stories of the badness of these early 
towns are gross exaggerations. Many men could and 
did live their lives without killing or great danger of 
being killed. Wild Bill was not one of these. Now 
he was reaping the full harvest of his reputation. 
Men who had heard of his speed on the draw and 
his accuracy with the six-gun were anxious to verify 
the tales they had heard. And the surest way to do 
this was to try it out. 

Then there is the curious human perversity that 
leads turbulent spirits to emulate the deeds that they 
have heard ascribed to others. In addition there were 
probably more than a few men in this country now with 
a grudge against Bill on account of some brother or 
friend who had tried conclusions with him—disas¬ 
trously. At any rate, the tale of his brief career at 
Hays City is just one fight after another. 

A notorious gambler, one Jack Strawhan, had run 
foul of Bill once before when the latter had helped 
a constable to arrest Jack. When Bill interfered with 
Jack’s plans to terrorize the town, there was an added 
zest to the enthusiasm with which Jack turned his 
artillery on the new city marshal. It was the old 
story over again of a fraction of a second’s delay in 
the draw and there was one gambler less in Hays City. 


170 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

The coroner’s jury decided in Bill’s favor, the ver¬ 
dict concluding, “Served him right and so we declare.” 

Then Bill Mulvey came up from Texas with some 
original ideas on how a Kansas town should be run 
and attempted to put them in execution. The coro¬ 
ner’s jury again found a verdict of self-defense. 

Hays City was the scene of one of Bill’s most des¬ 
perate encounters. Fort Hays was only a short dis¬ 
tance from the town and consequently soldiers vied 
with cowboys in making life interesting for the simple 
villagers. There was a big sergeant of cavalry who 
was accustomed to elect himself cock of the walk in 
the orgies that usually followed pay day. On one of 
these occasions he encountered opposition in the shape 
of the city marshal, and agreed to go back to the fort 
peaceably if he was whipped in fair light. In order to 
make sure of the job being properly done Bill did it 
himself. 

The sergeant was satisfied, but his comrades were 
not. In the shooting that followed several of the 
soldiers received proof that the stories of Bill’s prow¬ 
ess with the six-shooter were not overstatements. Bill 
himself was hit several times and lay in a buffalo 
wallow outside the town for two days. Then he re¬ 
ceived word that General Sheridan was looking for 
him with a guard from the fort and promptly re' 
signed without the formality of appearing in person. 

After he had again recovered from his wounds he 
took a brief excursion into the field of the showman. 
Niagara Falls was then, next to Saratoga, the most 
popular resort in the East, and Bill conceived the idea 


171 


Wild Bill Hickok 

of staging a buffalo hunt by Indians for the edification 
of visitors to the Falls. After infinite labor the buf¬ 
falo were captured and shipped East. The Indians 
were not so difficult. 

The show was given in due course, probably the 
first wild West show on record. Like many other 
men who venture into the show business, he found 
that it is easier to spend money than it is to take it 
in at the gate. At any rate his deficit was nearly equal 
to his total expenditure and he shook off the dust of 
the wily East for the wild West again. 

In spite of the unfortunate ending of his career as 
city marshal of Hays City he was soon prevailed on 
to try a similar function, this time in Abilene, Kansas. 
All the cattle-shipping towns in Kansas were subject 
to occasional irruptions in the shape of cattlemen from 
Texas. The end of the long, hot drive up across the 
Panhandle usually left all hands restless of hand and 
pocketbook and impatient of restraint. Then, too, 
there was a considerable local population not accus¬ 
tomed to standing hitched for a long period. 

One of these, in Abilene, was Phil Cole, a notorious 
gambler. The record does not state the original cause 
of the quarrel between Bill and Cole, nor does it much 
matter. Hickok’s friends informed him of Cole’s 
declaration that no marshal named Bill could stay in 
the same town with him. The answer was a street 
fight in which Cole and his friend Harney were both 
killed. 

This established Bill’s standing in that turbulent 
community, and when, soon after, a Texas cattleman 


172 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

refused to behave when ordered, he was roughly han¬ 
dled by some of Bill’s deputies. The Texan went 
back south vowing vengeance, and word soon drifted 
up the valley of the Canadian that he had offered a 
prize of five thousand dollars for Bill’s heart. Wild 
Bill pretended to weaken at this threat and after a 
group of strangers had drifted into town from the 
south he took an eastbound train, ostensibly for Kansas 
City. Eight of the strangers followed and took seats 
in the smoker. Bill sensed the plan, which was to get 
him into a quarrel over cards or some other trivial 
pretext and shoot him before he had a chance to get 
ready. 

To know that the danger was there was preparation 
enough for Bill. He appeared suddenly at the rear 
of the smoking car with a gun in each hand and ordered 
the eight worthies to stand up and file past. Mean¬ 
while the other occupants of the car sought safety 
under the seats. The train was running about thirty 
miles an hour, but Bill gave the would-be assassins their 
choice between jumping from the train or stopping a 
bullet from Bill’s revolver. All of them jumped, and 
as a reporter of the time rather modestly expressed 
it, only one of them was killed. 

The East was beginning to realize the dramatic 
interest of the wild West and some of the plains char¬ 
acters were not slow to take advantage of it. One of 
the pioneers in the wild West show business was Wild 
Bill’s friend, William F. Cody, known the world over 
as Buffalo Bill. This was in the early seventies, and 
after some persuasion Hickok ventured on an Eastern 


Wild Bill Hickok 173 

tour with Cody in a play of the frontier entitled 
“Scouts of the Plains.” 

Hickok’s theatrical career was short and not very 
successful. Impatient of discipline and hating the glare 
of the footlights, he soon became involved in a trifling 
quarrel with Cody and ended his experience on the 
stage. This did not happen, however, until after he 
had cleaned up a roomful of toughs from the oil 
regions in Titusville, Pennsylvania. They had come 
to town announcing their intention of finding out 
whether or not the bad man from the plains was as 
bad as he was advertised. Cody ordered all his people 
to stay in their rooms all day and go to the theater 
at night by a back way. Wild Bill yielded to the 
temptation of looking in on the toughs and the in¬ 
evitable fight followed. It was all over when Cody 
arrived and Wild Bill was alone in the room. Cody 
called him to account for disobedience of orders. 

“I thought you promised to come into the opera 
house by the private entrance,” he said. 

Wild Bill’s answer was meek but sufficient. “I did 
try to follow that trail but I got lost among the canons, 
and then I ran in among the hostiles. But it’s all 
right now; they won’t bother us any more.” And 
they didn’t. 

The West was growing away from frontiersmen of 
the Wild Bill type even then. There was no place 
east of the Mississippi for a frontiersman of his kind, 
and his habits were none too good. He tried one or 
two feeble theatrical ventures on his own account, but 
met with no success. Finally he drifted farther west. 


174 Boys* Own Book of Frontiersmen 

In Cheyenne he met a brother of Phil Cole, whom he 
had killed in Abilene. There was another fight and 
another notch on the butt of Bill’s gun. 

Gold had been found in the Black Hills. Bill had 
never been a prospector or a mountain man, but wher¬ 
ever there was excitement was a good place for his 
kind and he drifted with the others. A band of wan¬ 
dering Sioux attacked the cabin where Bill and his 
partners were wintering. Bill was out hunting and 
when he returned his partners were dead and the cabin 
was a heap of smoldering ashes. Bill hid out in a 
canon and was nearly at the end of his string when 
a sudden thaw and a heavy rain sent a flood down 
the canon and drowned the Indians. Bill climbed to 
safety and made his way across country to the near¬ 
est settlement. 

The end of this frontier hero’s life was inglorious 
enough. It came in Deadwood, in what is now South 
Dakota, in 1876. Deadwood was then a mining camp 
and the only law and order was that secured by in¬ 
formal organization of the miners. The town was 
wide open, with gambling houses and saloons on every 
corner and one or two in between. One night Bill 
sat long in a poker game, winning consistently, prin¬ 
cipally from one John McCall. McCall left the game 
in debt and Bill made mild comment on the ethics of 
a man who would bet more than he could pay. The 
next day McCall came into the room where Bill was 
sitting and shot him in the back of the head, killing 
him instantly. The man who lived by the six-shooter 
had died by the law that he had invoked all his life. 


Wild Bill Hickok 175 

McCall was tried by a jury of miners and acquitted 
on the ground of self-defense. 

Then he made the mistake of his life. He went 
to Cheyenne and boasted that he was the man who 
had killed the terror of the West. He was arrested 
by a United States marshal and tried in Yankton, then 
the territorial capital of Dakota, by a United States 
court, convicted, and hanged. 

This is the epitaph that for a long time stood over 
Wild Bill’s grave in the cemetery at Deadwood: 

WILD BILL (J. B. Hickok) 

Killed by the Assassin, Jack McCall, in Deadwood, 
August 2, 1876. Pard, we will meet again in the 
Happy Hunting Grounds to part no more. Good-by. 

Colorado Charley. 

Such an epitaph leaves little to be added. Wild 
Bill really lived. Perhaps not all the things that have 
been credited to him happened exactly as described, but 
it is useless at this late day to attempt to separate 
the false from the partly true and the true. Un¬ 
doubtedly the variations from fact are of minor im¬ 
portance. If not the exact things set down, yet sub¬ 
stantially those things, or things similar, were char¬ 
acteristic of him. He was of the golden age of the 
gunman. Not all men of his time and region lived 
by that hard code, nor even many. But the man who 
sought trouble seldom needed to travel far to find it 
in abundance. 

If he had been cast deliberately for the role of the 
traditional plains hero he could not have been better 


176 Boys 9 Own Book of Frontiersmen 

done. He was tall and slender, with light, curly hair, 
and a mild blue eye. He was quiet and courteous 
in manner, soft of speech, and something of a dandy 
in dress. The moving-picture heroes of to-day might 
well take him for a model. But they can never hope 
to equal him in one particular. He was real. 




















































' 














































THE A LAMA 




























































DAVY CROCKETT 


BEAR HUNTER AND HERO OF THE ALAMO 

T?OR a hundred years the name of Davy Crockett 
A has been a synonym for the backwoods hunter 
and marksman. The old story is still told of Davy 
and the coon. The coon in the treetop saw Davy 
aiming his unfailing rifle at him and recognized the 
hopelessness of hoping. “Don’t shoot, Davy. I’ll 
come down,” he said. 

Crockett was a product of the rude life that pre¬ 
vailed in the territory southwest of the Alleghenies 
after the Revolution. That war was only three years 
past when he was born in a log cabin on the bank 
of the Nollachucky River in Eastern Tennessee. His 
father had fought in the battle of King’s Mountain 
that broke the grip of the British in North Carolina 
and was the greatest demonstration of the power of 
the backwoods riflemen against trained troops that 
the Revolutionary War offered. 

His grandfather and grandmother were killed by 
Indians and one of his uncles had lived with Indians 
for eighteen years after the massacre. He un¬ 
doubtedly owed his life and adoption by the tribe 
to the fact that he was deaf and dumb. Savage tribes 
the world over have a special consideration, perhaps 
177 


178 Boys 9 Own Book of Frontiersmen 

a fear, for those who are lacking in some of the 
ordinary qualities. 

Neither of Davy’s parents could read or write and 
there was little or no formal religious training in 
that pioneer household. The boy was the fifth of nine 
children. Nothing is known of him up to the time 
he was twelve years old, except that his life trained 
him in the arts of hunting and trapping and hard 
work. The family moved often, but when he was 
twelve his father took up his longest residence on 
the banks of the Holston in Eastern Tennessee. Here 
he opened a tavern on the road between Abingdon 
and Knoxville. There was little wheel travel in those 
days, although there were teamsters freighting goods 
between Tennessee and Virginia. Many cattle were 
also driven over the rough trail. 

With one of these drovers, a man named Jacob 
Siler, he was sent by his father at the age of twelve 
on a four-hundred-mile trip to Rockville, Virginia. 
It was a hard experience for a small boy and home¬ 
sickness overcame him so that he ran away and took 
the trail for home. It was winter and there was 
much snow and ice on that hard mountain way. For 
a few days he joined a teamster who was bound for 
Tennessee. The pace of the plodding oxen was too 
slow and he pushed on alone. Again luck favored him 
and he was overtaken by a man riding one horse and 
leading another. This lift brought him nearly to 
his father’s house and he finished the hard journey 
on foot. 

By this time a school had been opened in the neigh- 


179 


Davy Crockett 

borhood and young Davy enjoyed an education of 
four days’ duration. Then he thrashed the school 
bully and ran away again. Running away seemed to 
be the only thing he could stick at. 

The story of his life for the next two or three 
years is one of almost constant traveling over the 
road between Tennessee and Virginia, two hundred 
miles farther than his previous trek. On the way 
back on foot he fell in with a man on horseback who 
offered to take him along, ride and tie. This was 
a familiar method of pioneer travel when there were 
two men and only one horse. The practice was to 
ride turn about, and then to tie the horse to a tree 
and push on afoot while the other came up to the 
horse, mounted him, and rode on for his turn. Davy’s 
friend of the trail disappointed him by doing most 
of the riding. 

He was nearly four hundred miles from home with 
four dollars in his pocket when he met his brother, 
also bound over the mountains with a drover. The 
brother urged him to go on home, but the fear of 
the whip was still strong and he hired himself to 
a farmer by the way, working till he had saved a 
suit of clothes and seven dollars. His next trip east 
carried him as far as Baltimore with a wagoner haul¬ 
ing flour. At the finish of this trip the horses ran 
away down a steep hill and dumped boy and flour 
in a heap at the bottom. Davy comments on this 
experience in his autobiography. “If he is born for 
a seat in Congress even flour barrels can’t make a 
mash of him.” 


180 Boys 1 Own Book of Frontiersmen 

The sight of ships’ masts in Baltimore stirred in 
him a desire to see something of the world outside 
America and he was about to ship for a voyage to 
London, but his wagoner boss refused to pay him 
the money due and kept his clothes besides as hostage. 
Davy gave up the sea trip but managed to smuggle 
his clothes out of the tavern. 

This time his trip back to Tennessee took two 
years, walking all the way and working between times 
to earn enough money to keep him alive. He arrived 
at his father’s tavern at night with a group of team¬ 
sters and took his place at the table with them without 
saying a word. The meal was half finished when 
his sister recognized him. It is worth noting that 
there was no whipping for him after his long absence. 

This was the end of his journeyings to and fro 
over the Virginia trail, but it was not the beginning 
of an easier life. His father owed a hard neighbor 
thirty-six dollars and the boy worked for the man 
six months to discharge the debt. Then he hired 
to another, a Quaker, for two shillings a day. When 
his term was nearly finished he learned that his father 
was in debt to this employer too. He allowed his 
wages to be offset against the claim and took the 
canceled notes to his father. Up to that time his 
father had claimed his wages after the fashion of 
the day, but from now on he was his own master. 

His first use of his new freedom was to go back to 
his Quaker boss and hire himself for six months for 
his board and keep, attending a school run by the 
Quaker’s son. This was the end of his education. 


181 


Davy Crockett 

He was now eighteen and a man grown in the 
backwoods sense and it was time to be thinking of 
marrying. His first two attempts were fruitless. One 
girl was already engaged to his Quaker teacher and 
the second accepted and set the day only to admit that 
she had been fooling him. His final choice was Polly 
Finlay, an Irish girl. His total worldly wealth con¬ 
sisted of five dollars and a horse, but in spite of this 
and the bitter opposition of Polly’s mother, he had 
his way. 

His married life began in a rented cabin bare of 
furniture. The young couple had the clothes they 
were married in, although Davy had increased his cash 
capital by fifteen dollars that he had borrowed. At 
the end of the first two years he had two colts, two 
cows, two calves—and two children. 

It was too much to expect that the roving blood 
of the lad who had wandered up and down the Vir¬ 
ginia trail would be so soon stilled and the West 
called him. The first move was to a point in what 
is now Lincoln County, Tennessee, near the Alabama 
line. Here he built a cabin and was content for two 
years. His next move carried him into Franklin 
County, near the present town of Winchester. 

This brought him to the opening of the War of 1812 
and the beginning of the Indian wars. Tecumseh, one 
of the greatest of red leaders and orators, was rang¬ 
ing from the Great Lakes to Florida, calling on his 
brethren to rise. The Creeks, a branch of the Semi- 
noles in Alabama, were the first to take fire and the 
garrison at Fort Mimms, in Southern Alabama, was 


182 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

surprised and wiped out, only seventeen whites escap¬ 
ing. The leader of the Indians was Red Eagle, the 
son of a white father and a Creek halfbreed mother. 
His white name was Weatherford. 

Andrew Jackson was on his way in command of a 
body of regular troops, and Crockett, fired with the 
thought of excitement and a change from domestic 
life, went to Winchester and enlisted. His first mili¬ 
tary work was a scouting trip into Indian country in 
which he found plenty of Indians but no hostiles. 
Hearing that a large band was on its way to attack 
Jackson, he returned to warn him, traveling sixty-five 
miles in twelve hours. The threatened attack failed 
to materialize and Crockett marched with Jackson’s 
force to attack Black Warrior, now Tuscaloosa. 
Again they drew a blank; the Indians, warned of their 
coming, had decamped. 

The story of this war with the Creeks that dragged 
on nearly to Jackson’s victory at New Orleans is a 
dreary and bloody one. Crockett was in the cruel 
fight at Tallushnatchee where the entire Indian force, 
a hundred and eighty-six in number, were killed or cap¬ 
tured. He took part in raising the siege of Talladega 
where a hundred and fifty friendly Creeks were be¬ 
sieged by a thousand hostiles. 

There was a brief interlude that nearly promised 
war between the regulars and the volunteers. The 
latter had enlisted for sixty days. Their time was 
more than up, rations were scarce, their pay was in 
arrears, and they announced their intention of going 
home. Jackson drew up his regulars across the road 


183 


Davy Crockett 

and ordered them to fire on the mutineers. The 
regulars refused and the volunteers marched through 
and took the road for home, Crockett among them. 
The end of this flurry was the reenlistment of many 
of the men, including Crockett, for a term of six 
months. 

Most of the time during these Creek campaigns he 
was a scout and hunter for the troops. Food was 
always low and the venison that he brought in was 
a welcome addition to camp fare. The Indians had 
had many cattle and hogs. These were now scattered 
through the woods and swamps and were hunted like 
wild animals. 

The Indians rushed the volunteers at Horseshoe 
Bend in the early morning and nearly stampeded the 
white troops. Again at Enotochapco they laid an 
ambush that, but for Russell and his scouts, of whom 
Crockett was one, might have been disastrous for 
Jackson. In his autobiography Crockett says Jack- 
son was nearer being “licked” in this fight than at 
any other time. 

Then the war drifted south and Jackson captured 
Pensacola from the Indians and Spanish. Russell 
and Crockett arrived a day late for the fight, having 
marched eighty miles in two days. There followed 
a wandering scout in the interior of Alabama in which 
they crossed the entire state, a march of thirty-one 
days. It was a starvation route. There were no 
trails in this land of wilderness, swamp, and canebrake. 
The soldiers were hungry all the time, ragged and 
footsore. 


184 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

Crockett seems to have been the only skilled hunter 
in the outfit and game was scarce. There was little 
danger now from the Indians, but there was great 
danger of starvation. Finally they headed north for 
Fort Decatur on the Tallapoosa. There was no 
food there. Fifty miles farther to Fort Williams. 
Still no food. Another forty miles to Fort Strothers. 
Here it was the same story of privation. 

Horses dropped by the way. Men staggered as 
they walked, unable to carry more than their rifles, 
and often not that. On the way they passed the ruins 
of old Fort Talladega where there had been a merciless 
slaughter of Indians earlier in the war when they 
had raised the siege of the friendly Creeks. Skulls 
strewed the ground like gourds. 

Crockett’s wife had died while he was absent in 
the Indian country and though he still had sixty days 
to serve he got leave to go home and see his family 
and, in the informal fashion of the military service 
of the day, failed to return. 

His period of mourning seems to have been short 
and soon he was married again, this time to a widow 
with two children. The country began to fill up after 
the end of the war and Crockett soon became restless 
as he saw his neighbors increasing. There was a trip 
to Central Alabama hunting horses, a trip on which 
Crockett nearly died, being nursed back to health by 
the Indians whom he had but lately been fighting. 
The government had purchased a large tract of land 
in Western Tennessee from the Chickasaws and this 
was being opened to settlers. 


185 


Davy Crockett 

Crockett found a site for his new home at the head¬ 
waters of Shoal Creek. It was a rough crowd that 
flocked into this new wilderness and it is a measure of 
Crockett’s capacity that he was elected magistrate. 
Like Daniel Boone in Missouri a few years before 
he knew no law, but he did know a lot about common 
sense. That rude backwoods community understood 
his fitting of the punishment to the crime. 

These days saw the dawning of his political ambi¬ 
tion. The first step was his election to the post of 
colonel of the local militia regiment. Military office 
was as political as any other and the title of colonel 
or general was almost a necessity for any one who 
expected to shine in backwoods politics. The year 
1821 saw him elected to the Tennessee legislature. 

Although never at any time an effective orator in 
the spread-eagle style of the day, his ready wit and 
power of anecdote made him a dangerous opponent. 
He knew the thoughts of his audience as well or better 
than they knew them themselves, and while other men 
talked largely of great public questions that were 
remote from the hard daily lives of the voters, he 
spoke the language that they used and told them 
homely truths that they knew from their own ex¬ 
perience. 

The next ten years were mixed ones for Crockett. 
Half his brain seemed concerned with political dreams, 
that mounted at one time even to the presidency of 
the United States. With the other half he thought 
the thoughts of the backwoods hunter, farmer, and 
doer of odd jobs. Already he was branching out in 


186 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

his activities. His first term in the legislature found 
him also the owner of a combined gristmill, powder- 
mill, and distillery, the products of all three being 
about equally popular with his neighbors. 

There is no record of the source of the capital that 
had enabled him to launch these enterprises, but it 
was a time of high prices and growing prosperity when 
money was relatively plenty, compared with the half- 
starved earlier days of his life. His career as a miller 
was short, as a flood soon carried away his buildings, 
and he moved farther west to the Obion River near the 
Mississippi. Here he found the elbowroom that he 
was seeking. His nearest neighbor was six miles 
away and the hunting was good. 

It was while he was living on the Obion that he 
won his great fame as a bear hunter. Some of his 
biographers credit him with being a killer of grizzlies. 
Unfortunately for this story there is no evidence of 
a grizzly being*found east of the Rockies. The bear 
that fell before his beloved Betsy, as he called his rifle, 
was the common black bear, or the brown as it is 
sometimes called. The small black and the brown 
bear are the same species, the variation in color being 
an individual accident. There is no true brown bear 
in this country this side of Alaska. 

The background of his early life on the Obion is 
one of privation and hardship. Powder was low on 
his arrival and the nearest reserve was a keg at his 
brother-in-law’s six miles away. It was winter and 
there was snow on the ground and the river was in 
flood, but he started for more powder. Afterwards 


187 


Davy Crockett 

he said of this trip, “I didn’t know before how much 
anybody could suffer and not die.” By the time he 
began his return trip the river was freezing and he 
was forced to break his way through the thin ice, 
nearly drowning two or three times. “But I had my 
powder, and that was what I went for.” 

The man who lived through those hard days had 
need of a high degree of rough hardihood. A living 
was to be wrung from the raw soil only with back¬ 
breaking labor. Much of the meat was gained by 
the settler’s rifle. This was not sport; it was the 
grimmest kind of hard work. In that first bitter 
winter, provisions were low and bears were ranging 
far from his clearing. Finally he killed one, the 
largest of his experience, fourteen miles from his 
cabin. It was late in the afternoon, but he made the 
trip to his cabin, blazing the trail as he went, secured 
help and went back and cut up the bear and packed in 
the meat and the skin that same night. 

At another time he was caught out in a dark, bleak 
night. The temperature dropped suddenly and his 
leggings and moccasins froze. Unable to build a fire 
of the wet wood, he kept himself from freezing by 
climbing a tree and sliding down again all night long. 
It was little wonder that the politicians of the usual 
type found it hard to contend against this man on 
the platform before an audience made up largely of 
people who knew more about bear hunting than they 
did about currency or the tariff. 

It is doubtful if any American hunter has ever 
bettered his record on one variety of game killed. 


188 Boys 9 Own Book of Frontiersmen 

Here is the bear score during a single season: seventeen 
killed in one week; forty-seven in one month; a hundred 
and five in the year. Once with his little son he killed 
three in half an hour. At another time he and another 
man shot one a day for fourteen days. 

During these hunting interludes the political bee was 
buzzing ever more loudly in Crockett’s bonnet. He 
had been reelected to the legislature and failed of 
election to Congress by only two votes. Politics calls 
for more money than this backwoods hunter could 
command and he decided to try his hand as a stave- 
maker. At this time the staves for barrels were split 
in the woods by hand and then sent down the river 
to New Orleans or Vicksburg in flatboats. 

A hard winter’s work had produced about thirty 
thousand of these staves and when the high water 
came in the spring Crockett started down river with 
his wooden harvest loaded on two flatboats. Unfor¬ 
tunately there were no rivermen in the party and the 
Mississippi is a stream of sullen, freakish power when 
the water is high, and the boatman has need of all his 
knowledge and skill. 

Soon Crockett’s boats were jammed against a pile 
of driftwood that had caught at a bend and the boats 
were pulled under by the suction of the current. 
Crockett was in the cabin at the time. The rush of 
the water drove him back from the low door and 
some of his men hauled him through a small window 
minus most of his clothing. The cargo went under 
with the boats. 

Failing to raise the capital he needed for his next 


189 


Davy Crockett 

political move, he decided to borrow a hundred dollars 
and run for Congress anyway. He had two op¬ 
ponents, both of them experienced campaigners who 
made the mistake of ignoring this rough backwoods¬ 
man and centering their fight on each other. In con¬ 
sequence Crockett got in by a good majority and bor¬ 
rowed another hundred dollars to pay his fare to 
Washington. 

His career in Washington can be described in few 
words. He was extremely popular, but it was as an 
odd character, a teller of stories, a good companion, 
rather than as a statesman. President Jackson was 
the man of the hour, especially in the Southern and 
Western states. The people there hailed him as one 
of their own kind, a friend and supporter of their 
interests against the wealthy and selfish East. 

No one who opposed him could expect much mercy 
from the Jackson supporters and Crockett opposed 
him on two points. One was the removal of all the 
Indians in the South to the territory west of the Mis¬ 
sissippi. In this Crockett knew something of his 
subject. He had fought the Indians and hunted with 
them and he could find no reason in such harsh 
measures. 

The other point on which he fought the President 
was the removal of the government funds from the 
United States Bank. This is an issue that is long 
since dead, but it was a bitter one in its time. Crockett 
knew little of finance or currency, but he knew that he 
distrusted the acts of his old general in the wars against 
the Creeks and he said so. As a result, he won his 


190 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

second term by a greatly reduced majority and was 
defeated in his third try. 

The two years’ leisure from politics that this defeat 
gave him he spent in hunting, farming, and writing 
his autobiography. This is one of the queerest and 
most characteristic books that his time produced. It 
is difficult to tell how much of it was his own work 
and there is good reason to believe that some at least 
of the later chapters were written by some one else. 
The phrasing, however, indicates that much of it was 
from the hand of the bear hunter himself. No out¬ 
sider could quite so exactly have written the kind of 
book that a man like Crockett would be expected to 
write. It proves, at least, that the boy whose total 
schooling was only six months had done something 
more with his life than hunt bears and gossip at 
crossroads stores. 

The campaign of 1833 saw him reelected to Con¬ 
gress. He had improved as a speaker, and he seems 
also to have learned a little tact in his attitude toward 
that popular idol, Jackson. In one of his speeches 
he said he would follow the President as long as the 
President went straight. Then he told the story of 
the boy who was set to plow a straight furrow across 
a field. His father told him to plow toward a red 
cow in an adjoining pasture. But the cow was graz¬ 
ing and moving as she grazed and the furrow the 
boy plowed was anything but straight. That, said 
Crockett, was the way with the men who set themselves 
to follow Jackson through thick and thin. 

The outstanding event of his last term in Congress 


191 


Davy Crockett 

was a trip to Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. 
He rode over the new railroad, that had just been 
built from Delaware City to Chesapeake Bay, behind 
a locomotive that had been brought over from Eng¬ 
land. Philadelphia presented him with a watch charm 
and a rifle built to his own specifications and he spoke 
to five thousand people at the Exchange. 

New York he declared to be “a bulger of a place.” 
The masts of the ships in the harbor looked “like the 
dead trunks of so many trees in a clearing.” He saw 
Fanny Kemble, the famous actress, “like a handsome 
piece of changeable silk.” The places he asked to 
see in Boston were Faneuil Hall and Bunker Hill 
Monument. Cambridge, the seat of Harvard Col¬ 
lege, he avoided “for fear they would tack an LL.D. 
after his name” as they had done with Jackson. 

His homeward journey was a prolonged ovation, 
all the way to Pittsburgh and down the Ohio and 
Mississippi by boat. His political hopes were at their 
highest. The East had acclaimed him and the applause 
went to his head. He saw no reason why Jackson 
should not be succeeded in the White House by 
Crockett. The higher his hopes the greater the crash 
when he was defeated for Congress in the campaign 
of 1835 . He had made his fight against the President, 
and Old Hickory was still the stronger man, even in 
the district where the bear hunter was known and liked. 
The blow was a bitter one. The world of his dreams 
had tumbled about his ears. Hunting had lost its 
savor. He stayed at home and sulked. 

Now comes the great change in Crockett’s life, the 


192 Boys y Own Book of Frontiersmen 

step that was at once the most glorious and the most 
difficult to understand. Texas had won its independ¬ 
ence from Mexico in the same year that saw his final 
crushing defeat for Congress. Word came up the 
Mississippi in 1836 that Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna 
was coming with an army of 7,500 to win back the 
rebellious territory. The chief stronghold of the 
Texans in Central Texas was San Antonio, then called 
Bexar. In the outskirts of the town was the old 
monastery which was all that was left of the Mission 
San Antonio de Valero, later known as the Alamo, the 
Spanish word for cottonwood. This is a name that 
will live in American history as long as bravery is 
remembered. 

All this, however, was still in the future when 
Crockett in 1836 reached his decision to throw in 
his lot with the Texans. Part of his reason was un¬ 
doubtedly a sincere desire to help the men of the new 
republic in their struggle with Mexico. There was 
some pique over what he regarded as the desertion of 
his cause by the voters of his district. Added to 
these two reasons there was the restlessness of an 
ambitious man whose life from the age of twelve had 
been a wandering. The man of fifty was not greatly 
different from the lad of fifteen who stood on the 
wharves at Baltimore and heard the sea call him to 
strange ports. 

At any rate, whatever the reasons, he left his family 
to shift for themselves and started for Texas. His 
way was down the Mississippi and up the Arkansas 
to Little Rock. Travel in that day was a leisurely, 


Davy Crockett 193 

friendly affair. Crockett’s fame had run before him. 
He made speeches amd was banqueted and toasted. 
At Little Rock he won a special shooting match and 
then addressed the crowd on what he pleased to call 
the questions of the day. We can imagine that they 
were mostly denunciations of one Andrew Jackson. 

From Little Rock he traveled a hundred and twenty 
miles by horseback to the Red River. As he ap¬ 
proached the ford of the Washita on the way, through 
a dense wilderness, he heard a fiddle. There was no 
sign of a cabin and the traveler wondered where his 
musician might be. As he came in sight of the ford 
he saw the fiddler sitting in a country buggy in the 
middle of the river with the flood water washing 
around the box of the buggy while he fiddled for dear 
life, “Hail Columbia” and “Over the Water to 
Charlie.” It was a wandering missionary caught in a 
sudden freshet, fiddling for help after he had worn his 
voice to a shred. 

Nowhere else in our history can there be found a 
story like this Odyssey of our Tennessee bear-hunting 
politician on his way to the Alamo fight. On a boat 
going down the Red River to Nachitoches he picked up 
a gambler, Thimblerig, named from his favorite game 
of tempting the unwary to guess which thimble the 
pea was under. Crockett refused to play and lectured 
the apostle of chance on his wasted life. The result 
was a recruit for Texas. “Live honestly or die 
bravely,” said the gambler, “I go with you to Texas.” 

Another companion of the voyage was a bee-hunting 
poet. Hunting the honey of wild bees was a mildly 


194 Boys* Own Book of Frontiersmen 

profitable occupation in that country, although few 
men followed it as a means of livelihood. It is doubt¬ 
ful if the second recruit found his sole income in either 
bees or poetry. Whatever his past, this man, too, be¬ 
came a knight-errant for Texas. 

Their first objective point in Texas was Nacog¬ 
doches, an old Spanish town a hundred and twenty 
miles west of the border. Here they rested a few 
days and when they left Davy made a speech in which 
he promised his hearers to “grin down the walls of the 
Alamo, and the Americans will lick up the Mexicans 
like fine salt.” The bee hunter kissed his sweetheart 
Katy good-by and rode away singing, 

“Saddled and bridled and booted rode he, 

A plume in his helmet, a sword at his knee.” 

There were three hundred hard miles between 
Nacogdoches and San Antonio—canebrake, swamp, 
prairie, and trailless wilderness. Still two more 
wanderers joined them, a villainous-looking customer 
in sailor’s garb, with a scar on his forehead and an¬ 
other on his hand, who proved to have been both 
sailor and pirate in his time, and an Indian in buck¬ 
skin. The five oddly assorted Galahads rode on for 
liberty. 

One of them, the gambler, was not too pleased with 
the latest additions to the ranks. He objected to 
eating with the pirate. That worthy drew a long 
knife from his shirt and laid it on the table with the 
remark, “Stranger, you had better take a seat at the 
table, I think.” Thimblerig thought so too. 



THREE HUNDRED HARD MILES TO SAN ANTONIO 





Davy Crockett 195 

The record of the journey is vague and the truth 
of many of the incidents doubtful. There is a story 
of Crockett’s killing a cougar with a knife, which is to 
be regarded with large suspicion, not from any distrust 
of Crockett’s courage but rather of the cougar’s. 
They hunted buffalo and fell in with Indians. Twenty 
miles from San Antonio they were attacked by a band 
of Mexicans four times their number, who fled at the 
first shot. 

When they reached the Alamo in February the 
Mexicans were nearing the town. The attacking force 
had dwindled from 7,500 to 1,600, but still far out¬ 
numbered the defenders who counted up to a hundred 
and fifty. The commander of the fortress was Wil¬ 
liam B. Travis, a young Texan of undoubted bravery 
and ability, and in the garrison was James Bowie, the 
inventor of the bowie knife, once famous all through 
the South and Southwest. As the Mexicans ap¬ 
proached, the men of the garrison were given their 
chance by Travis to leave if they wished but not a 
man accepted the offer of his life. There seems to 
have been slight doubt in the minds of the little com¬ 
pany that death was to be their portion in the fight 
that was coming. 

It was February 23, 1836, when the Mexicans came 
in sight and the Texans hoisted the flag of their in¬ 
dependence, thirteen red and white stripes on a blue 
ground with a white star in the center. Between the 
points of the star were the letters T—E—X—A—S. 
It was the Lone Star flag. 

Santa Anna demanded the surrender of the garrison 


196 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

and was answered with a cannon shot. Travis called 
for a volunteer to go to Goliad, a four days’ journey, 
to ask for reinforcements. It was the pirate of the 
Gulf who was the first to step forward. At nightfall 
thirty men appeared from Goliad, having met the 
pirate as he was setting out. He kept on his way 
and the new men joined the garrison, as Crockett notes 
in his diary which was claimed to have been found 
in the ruins afterward, “just in time to reap a harvest 
of glory; but there is some prospect of sweating blood 
before we gather it in.” 

On the 24th, the Mexicans opened fire with 
a battery three hundred and fifty yards from the walls 
of the fort. Early in the action the gambler was 
wounded by a ricochet three-ounce ball. It was cut 
into four rifle bullets and was sent back with com¬ 
pound interest, a Mexican for each shot. The bee 
hunter seems also to have been a good shot. At one 
time he led a party sent out for wood and water. 
Attacked by three times their number, they cut their 
way back and the bee hunter found a bullet embedded 
in the Bible that Katy gave him at Nacogdoches. “I 
am not the first sinner whose life has been saved by 
this book,” was his comment. 

It is as well to note that there is much doubt about 
the truth of many of the incidents told about the 
siege. A large body of legend soon grew up about 
this fight and it is almost impossible to separate the 
true from the false. One thing is true: there were 
no cowards or shirkers in the Alamo and every man 
who died there took toll of nearly ten times his number 


Davy Crockett 197 

before the end. O'nce the Mexicans planted a battery 
within easy rifle range and Crockett killed five can¬ 
noneers in quick succession. Then the battery was 
withdrawn. During the whole time of the siege Bowie, 
“worth five ordinary men,” was sick and practically 
helpless. 

On March 4th a man appeared running toward 
the fort. It was the pirate returning from his fruit¬ 
less trip to Goliad, true to his trust. The Mexicans 
rushed to cut him off and men ran out from the fort 
to help him. There was a hand-to-hand fight in which 
eight Mexicans were killed, but the pirate and the bee 
hunter were mortally wounded. The old sailor died 
without speaking, but there is a legend that the bee- 
hunter poet finished the song that he sang as they 
rode out of Nacogdoches. 


“But toom cam’ the saddle, all bluidy to see, 

And hame cam’ the steed, but hame never cam’ he.” 

The last entry in the diary that has been attributed 
to Crockett is dated March 5th. “Pop, pop, pop. 
Bom, bom, bom. No time for memorandums now. 
Go ahead. Liberty and independence forever.” 

The end came March 6th. Reinforcements had 
swelled the Mexican force to 4,000 and losses had 
reduced the Texans far below the original hundred 
and eighty. The attackers came on in column, Santa 
Anna leading and the band playing the Dequello. 
Cavalry flanked the infantry and the officers drove 
their men to the attack with the flat of their swords. 


198 Boys 9 Own Book of Frontiersmen 

It was early in the morning, but the defenders manned 
the walls. Twice they drove them back, but the at¬ 
tackers came too fast for the riflemen to shoot them 
down. 

When the outer wall was breached and there was 
no time to reload, the defenders clubbed their muskets 
and fought hand to hand with butts and knives. From 
room to room of the old Mission the fight raged. 
In the hospital the wounded fought from their cots 
with pistols. It was here that Bowie died. There is 
no clear record of the manner of Crockett’s death. 
One woman was in the Alamo through the fight, a 
Mrs. Dickinson. She and two Mexican servants were 
the only survivors. Afterwards Mrs. Dickinson said 
that when the battle was over she saw Crockett’s 
mutilated body lying near the main wall. 

The manner of his dying is of little importance now. 
His passing is mingled with the heroic tragedy of 
the Alamo that gave the watchword in the Texas 
struggle for independence that followed hard after. 
“Remember the Alamo” was a bitter phrase to Santa 
Anna when Houston cornered him at San Jacinto. 
Crockett could not ask a better epitaph for himself 
and his brave comrades than the inspired phrase that 
is graven on the memorial which stands now on the 
site of the Alamo: “Thermopylae had its messenger of 
defeat. The Alamo had none.” 


SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON 

THE LORD OF THE IROQUOIS 


/^\UT of the long list of American frontiersmen 
from whatever sources and of whatever types, 
none came to us from a more surprising origin than 
he who afterwards became Sir William Johnson. He 
was of the race that has furnished many of our sturdi¬ 
est pioneers, the Irish, but while most of our border¬ 
ers were of stock that came to this country in hope 
of a broader freedom for themselves and a firmer 
footing for their independent spirits, Johnson’s fam¬ 
ily were in no great need of bettering themselves 
financially nor were they of the class that could by 
any stretch of the imagination be called oppressed. 

His father had held a commission in a famous Irish 
regiment known as Cadogan’s Horse and had fought 
in Marlborough’s wars. Badly wounded at Ouden- 
arde, he left the service and became a magistrate in 
Ireland. Here the young William was born in 1715. 
His mother was of good family. Two of her brothers, 
Peter and Oliver Warren, were officers in the Royal 
Navy, and Peter finally rose to the rank of admiral. 

His education was that of the ordinary boy of good 
family, and he seems to have been quite the average 
turbulent young cub of high spirits. His father had 
199 


200 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

various hopes for him, the army, the navy, business, 
all of which seemed tumbled about the family’s ears 
when William was expelled from school at the age of 
seventeen. The old rule of the danger of sparing the 
rod held sway in Irish schools, but one of the masters 
applied it to William once too often. Details are 
lacking, except that in addition to being expelled the 
youngster was fined seven guineas for assault. Evi¬ 
dently he was a robust schoolboy. 

For some time he loafed around home, read a little 
law under his father, acted as magistrate’s clerk for 
that peppery gentleman, and generally killed time after 
the fashion of boys the world over. A love affair 
with which his parents failed to agree brought the 
domestic affairs of the Johnsons to a small crisis. 

At this point Peter Warren stepped in and suggested 
that Nephew William be given a chance to try his 
hand in the New World. Warren had married a 
daughter of Stephen de Lancey of the colony of New 
York and through his American connection had become 
interested in a land speculation in the Mohawk Valley 
west of Albany. Young William jumped at the chance 
and apparently his father was glad to have the problem 
taken off his hands. At any rate, the young man 
landed in New York in 1737 at the age of 22. The 
town house of the de Lanceys still stands in lower 
New York under the name of Fraunce’s Tavern, and 
it was here that the boy probably stopped during his 
brief stay on the lower Hudson. 

The region to which he was bound lay about twenty- 
five miles beyond Schenectady and was called by the 


Sir William Johnson 


201 


.Dutch, who still predominated, Woestina—the Wilder¬ 
ness. It was the country of the Mohawks, the most 
easterly of the original five tribes of the Iroquois. In 
1737 it was still what the name implied, a wilderness. 
West of the tiny settlement of Warrensburg or bush, 
there were no settlers, no farms, no clearings, no posts 
except Oswego on Lake Ontario where there was a 
small military garrison. When Johnson arrived at his 
uncle’s land he found himself one of a small handful 
facing a territory controlled by the Iroquois. North¬ 
ward the nearest settlements were held by the French 
in Canada, hereditary enemies, and at the time of his 
arrival on the eve of becoming active once again. 

English and Irish were beginning to come in in small 
numbers and there were a few Germans from the 
Protestant states who were seeking to escape the 
persecutions that still went on after the religious wars 
that had convulsed Germany a century earlier. The 
region was beyond the scope of the original Dutch 
patroons, as the big landholders of the first grants were 
called, and the Dutch who had come in were actuated 
largely by a desire to escape from the tyranny of the 
powerful landlords. Their first leader was Arendt 
van Corlear (Curler). So strong was the impression 
of honesty and friendliness he had made on the Indians 
that for years after his death the Iroquois term of 
respect for any governor was “Our Father Curler.” 
He was the founder of Schenectady and it was to his 
memory and the store of good will that he left that 
Johnson in some measure fell heir. 

It was pure chance that brought a man like Johnson 


202 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

into close contact with the Iroquois. Here was the 
bravest, the most warlike, probably the most intelligent, 
and certainly among the most cruel of the tribes on 
the American continent. Properly speaking, it was not 
a tribe at all, but a confederacy, originally of five 
members. Stretching westward from Albany, they 
held Central New York along the valley of the Mo¬ 
hawk. In order from Albany, they lay, Mohawks, 
Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. 

Some time late in the seventeenth century or early 
in the eighteenth, the remnant of their old enemies 
to the southward, the Tuscaroras, were added, making 
a federation of six nations. The Mohawks were the 
most numerous and the most able. Fortunately, they 
were also the most inclined toward friendliness with 
the English and the Dutch. 

With the exception of some of the Cherokees and 
the Creeks far to the south, the Iroquois were the 
only eastern Indians who did not support themselves 
by hunting. Their villages, called castles, were more 
or less permanent. Around them lay cleared fields 
in whose fertile soil they grew quantities of maize or 
Indian corn, beans, pumpkins, squashes, and tobacco. 
This gave them a strength and a permanence such as 
the wandering tribes did not enjoy, and at the same 
time led them to look with greater distrust on the 
coming of the white settlers. 

Their own name for the federation of the nations 
was the Long House, after the shape of their favorite 
type of winter dwelling. The Indian name that the 
early Dutch had borrowed for their settlement of 


Sir William Johnson 203 

Schenectady meant “place just outside the door,” 
namely, the eastern door of the Long House. 

Johnson traveled up the river by sailboat to Albany. 
Thence he moved on, probably by wagon, to Schenec¬ 
tady. His new home lay still twenty-five miles farther, 
on the front line of the settlement fronting the lands 
of the Iroquois. The last stage was probably by boat 
or canoe. On his arrival he set to work at once clear¬ 
ing the land and disposing of it to settlers. He also 
began the trade with the Indians which he continued 
all his life. 

At this time the Indian trade was in a bad way. 
For some years it had been in the hands of shifty, 
unscrupulous individuals who were more intent on a 
quick, large profit than on building up good will and 
a permanent business. The Iroquois were in danger 
of forgetting Father Curler until Johnson came. The 
young trader and landlord spoke little Iroquois, but 
he did speak a language of honesty and fair dealing 
that they were quick to understand. 

Indian sign talk has a sign for an honest man. The 
finger is brought to the lips and then moved straight 
forward. When a dishonest man is meant the fingers 
move forward in a wavy line. For some time it had 
been only the latter that had been used among the 
Iroquois to describe most traders. Johnson brought 
back the straight line. 

Of his early years in the Mohawk country there is 
little to be said. He was busy on his land and in his 
trading store. Soon he established another post on the 
Susquehanna nearly two hundred miles to the south. 


204 Boys y Own Book of Frontiersmen 

When he had been in the colony two years Johnson 
married, his wife being Catherine Weisenberg, the 
daughter of a German minister from the Protestant 
section of Germany. The family had fallen on evil 
days financially and Catherine had been bound out to 
a Mr. Phillips. Johnson bought her indenture, as the 
process of binding was called, and married her. Bind¬ 
ing was really a form of domestic slavery that has 
not been practiced for many years, although little more 
than a generation ago it still existed in remote coun¬ 
try districts. There were three children, John, the 
son, and two daughters. None of them was of im¬ 
portance and all of them passed out of sight soon 
after the Revolution. 

Johnson was growing rapidly in power and pres¬ 
tige. From the first the Iroquois had accepted him 
as a brother. By 1740 he had learned the language 
well enough to speak it without an interpreter and 
soon he was almost as fluent in the Indian speech as 
in his own mother tongue. As his power with the 
Indians grew so did his influence and fame through¬ 
out the colony and even across the sea. 

He had taken up a large grant of land in his own 
name in addition to the tract that he was managing 
on behalf of his uncle, and by 1743 we find him living 
in a great stone house that he had built near a high 
hill called Mount Johnson. It was veritably the be¬ 
ginning of a manor in the wilderness and Johnson was 
the undoubted lord of the manor. On the summit of 
Mount Johnson was a lookout tower where in times 
of unrest a guard was maintained and, during the 


Sir William Johnson 205 

French and Indian troubles that were soon to come, a 
small garrison. 

He was still engrossed in his own affairs, devel¬ 
oping his trade with the Indians, clearing land, and 
bringing out settlers, principally from Ireland. In 
1741 he settled sixty Irish families from County Down 
on his land, giving them long leases at low rentals. 
A few years latter a hundred and sixty German refu¬ 
gees came over in a body. Before 1745 he had gath¬ 
ered about him a genuine frontier yeomanry, every one 
of them a Johnson man through thick and thin. Al¬ 
ready he was being regarded as the biggest man not 
only in the Mohawk Valley, but throughout the colony. 

For a long time there had been general dissatisfac¬ 
tion on both sides at the way in which the relations 
with the Indians had been handled. The New York 
tribes were under the control of a Board of Indian 
Commissioners. Most of the members knew little 
of Indian character and regarded their posts largely 
as political opportunity. The people of the Mohawk 
region, living under the cloud of the Indian menace as 
they did, realized fully the importance of friendship 
with the Iroquois. They were the only barrier against 
the French and Indians from Canada. 

There were men still living who could remember 
the red dawn at Schenectady in 1690 when two thirds 
of its two hundred and fifty inhabitants were killed or 
captured and sixty of its sixty-six houses put to the 
torch. They at least appreciated, if the politicians 
at the mouth of the Hudson did not, the value of the 
human wall against a repetition of this tragedy. 


206 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

The opportunity to put Johnson in a position of 
power came with the resignation of Peter Schuyler 
from the Indian Board in 1743 and he was promptly 
appointed. There were five members, and more votes 
were needed. The law required that at least one 
member of the board should be a minister and Johnson 
was quick to seize the first opportunity to push for¬ 
ward his father-in-law, Jacob Weisenberg. Soon he 
had still another friend on the board, the Rev. Mr. 
Van Ness of Albany. 

With three votes out of five he felt fairly safe, and 
he set himself to accomplish two things. One was 
the breaking up of the liquor traffic with the Iro¬ 
quois, which had grown to alarming proportions. The 
other was the driving out of the Jesuit missionaries 
who were the most active agents of the French and 
the substituting for them of Protestants sent in under 
his own watchful eye. 

The stage was being set for the beginning of the 
final fatal struggle between French and English for a 
footing on the American continent, and Northern New 
York was at once a weak spot in the English line and 
a key point of the greatest importance. 

Johnson’s stake in the coufitry was growing every 
year. By this time he had built a sawmill capable of 
turning out a thousand to fifteen hundred feet of 
lumber in a day. He had a gristmill practically com¬ 
pleted, and was busy importing blooded stock, horses, 
cattle, sheep, to improve the strains on his own land 
and all through the district. 

Into the midst of this busy, bustling life came news 


Sir William Johnson 207 

of war with France. This was in 1744. On this 
side of the water it was called for many years the 
Old French War, while abroad it carried the more 
high-sounding title of the War of the Austrian Suc¬ 
cession. The immediate occasion was a squabble 
among kings and prime ministers and parliaments over 
the heir to the throne of Austria, but so far as the 
colonists in America were concerned it was the be¬ 
ginning of the struggle for the domination of the 
continent. 

Spreading from the inner courts and cabinets of, 
Europe, it set the tribes along the borders between 
the English colonies and Canada to muttering and 
drove the old fear of massacre home to the hearts of 
the settlers. Men went armed in their stumpy fields 
and even carried their muskets to church. A mixed 
English and colonial expedition captured Louisburg 
in Nova Scotia, and the French and Indians retaliated 
by swooping down on Longmeadow, a small colony in 
Western Massachusetts, blotting it out with fire and 
blood. Then they struck again at Saratoga and swept 
north before a sufficient force could be raised to stop 
them. The French were ready and the colonists were 
filled with alarm. 

In the midst of this clamor and universal fright, 
Governor Clinton, the brave and honest but stupid 
governor of New York colony, saw fit to quarrel with 
the most important Dutch landowners and followed 
it up by alienating most of the English. Finally in 
high disgust he wiped out the Board of Indian Com¬ 
missioners by a stroke of the pen and appointed Will- 


208 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

iam Johnson sole Superintendent of Indian Affairs. 
For once Clinton acted wisely. The right man was in 
supreme control. It was the first real official recogni¬ 
tion of Johnson’s power over the Indians and the begin¬ 
ning of a career that was to make him the most pow¬ 
erful white man among all the tribes. 

Some time earlier Clinton had appointed him col¬ 
onel of a local militia regiment and king’s magistrate 
as well. His official position was now secure. With 
the lowering of the cloud of war from the north it at 
once became of supreme importance to have the Iro¬ 
quois well disposed and in readiness. If they turned 
against the colonists all was lost. Johnson could an¬ 
swer for his Mohawks. They were as the fingers of 
his hand. He w r as not so sure of the nations to the 
west, particularly the Senecas, who had been especially 
exposed to the French influence. Johnson took to the 
trails and traveled incessantly from castle to castle. 
Wherever he went he exhorted them to stand fast 
against their old enemies of the north. He smoked 
with the old chiefs and danced and hunted with the. 
young braves. Everywhere he went he won them to 
him, but suspicion still sprang up where the French 
priests followed after. By this time he was a mem¬ 
ber of the tribe and was no longer William Johnson 
to them but Waraiyage. 

Following his trips among the Indians a great coun¬ 
cil of the chiefs of the tribes was held at Albany in 
1746. There was still bad blood between the eastern 
and western divisions and they refused to travel to¬ 
gether to the fort where the council was held—in fact 


Sir William Johnson 209 

they even refused to travel on the same side of the 
Mohawk and came to Albany on opposite sides of 
the river. So they entered the gate of the fort, in 
double column, Johnson marching at the head of his 
Mohawks in full Indian array. There was much 
speechmaking and many promises, much eating and 
smoking. The stalwart Iroquois leaders sat in solemn 
circle and listened in silence for the most part, except 
for an occasional deep-toned exclamation, “Yo hay? Yo 
hay? }) “Do you hear? Do you believe?” 

While the council was in session French and Indians 
attacked an outlying village within a few miles of 
Schenectady. The rumor spread that the massacre 
of 1690 was to be repeated, and the Indians and the 
colonial militia rushed to the defense, but by the time 
they reached the spot the invaders were well on their 
way back to the border. 

The result of all these conferences was nothing. The 
governor and the colonial legislature were in a con¬ 
stant wrangle and only Johnson and his Iroquois were 
ready for a fight. There was a futile attempt at 
an attack on Crown Point, the southernmost French 
post on Lake Champlain. It is worth noting that 
the only man in the colony who seemed to realize the 
military value of good roads was Johnson, the leader 
of the forest fighters. He did manage to build a 
road from Glens Falls to Lake George which was to 
be of value at a later time. 

All the time, Johnson was strengthening his hold on 
the Indians. The only good result of all the bick- 


210 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

ering was his appointment to the command of the 
Northwest frontier. 

About this time an English lady visited him in 
his forest manor and left an account of her impressions. 
She found him a tall, deep-chested, big-boned, power¬ 
ful man with dark eyes and a ready Irish smile. She 
was astonished at the luxury in which he lived. His 
table was provided not only with all that the forests 
afforded, fish, deer, elk-meat, bear, occasionally even 
buffalo, but all that could be had in the markets of 
New York. His cellar held the best vintage wines and 
in all respects he lived like a wealthy country gentle¬ 
man of England or Ireland. 

There was an important difference, however. Among 
the guests to be found almost constantly at the dinner 
table was usually a sprinkling of Indians. The Eng¬ 
lish visitor complained that the friends of her host 
wore English dress and for the most part spoke Eng¬ 
lish, with the occasional exception of those who came 
from a distance and had no English words. With 
these the host spoke in Iroquois. Later she discov¬ 
ered for herself that this was part of the code. When 
Johnson visited them in their castles he dressed Iro¬ 
quois and spoke their language. They could do no 
less when the relationship was reversed. 

An important change had taken place in the lord of 
the manor’s domestic arrangements. His wife died in 
1745 and in 1748 an Indian woman remembered only 
as Caroline became what was virtually his common 
law wife. There was no marriage ceremony, but they 
lived together until Caroline’s death in 1753. In 1754 


Sir William Johnson 21 J 

Molly Brant appeared. She was a full-blooded Mo¬ 
hawk who is said to have been of considerable beauty 
and great force of character. She presided at his 
table, took charge of his household, and in turn re¬ 
ceived all the respect due the lady of the manor. 

Molly Brant was the daughter of Niclaus Brant, the 
most important chief of the Mohawks. Her brother 
was Joseph Brant, close friend of Johnson and as¬ 
sociated with him in all his dealings with the Indians. 
After the death of Niclaus, Joseph succeeded to the 
headship of the Mohawks. In the history of the 
American Revolution the name of Joseph, or Thayen- 
daga as the Indians called him, is most unfavorably 
associated with the bloody massacre at Cherry Valley, 
but that chapter was yet to be written at the time of 
which we are writing. 

Not only were Indian guests frequent at Mount 
Johnson, but there were many informal powwows at 
which much larger numbers would attend. Many 
times tents were erected on the lawn and tables spread 
under the trees where the red-skinned councilors ate 
long and heartily. All of this entertainment was at 
Johnson’s own expense. At one time a critic in the 
colonial assembly called attention to the fact that the 
Superintendent of Indian Affairs was also the greatest 
Indian trader of the whole Northwest. Johnson re¬ 
torted that it took all his profits as a trader to pay 
the costs of entertainment that his position as super¬ 
intendent made necessary. 

Meanwhile the formal councils went on. Johnson 
seems to have been almost the only man in the colony 


212 Boys 1 Own Book of Frontiersmen 

who knew how to deal with the Indians and had the 
courage of his own beliefs. The others talked and 
argued and disagreed. Then they called another 
council and there were more speeches—and still no 
conclusions. Of course the real reason was that the 
Indian was bound to lose as the white man increased 
in numbers and power and the Indian leaders knew 
this. Most of the white men were unwilling to face 
the hard fact openly. 

In one of the Albany councils (1748) there were 
present seven colonial governors, the Indian commis¬ 
sioners and superintendents from all the North At¬ 
lantic and New England colonies, and thirty Indian 
chiefs with retinues of their most important warriors. 
It was a showy affair and probably the greatest council 
ever held in Indian history. Swarthy, dignified chiefs 
of the Six Nations of the Iroquois, Delawares from 
Pennsylvania, Shawnees from as far away as Ohio, 
Adirondacks from the Canadian border, remnants of 
the so-called River tribes of New England who had 
been fading in‘numbers and influence since the bitter, 
bloody King Philip’s War nearly a hundred years be¬ 
fore, stalked through the streets of old Fort Orange, 
painted in ceremonial fashion, feathered and plumed 
and impressive in beads and buckskin. 

Johnson exulted over a personal triumph in this 
council. Hiokato, the greatest war chief of the re¬ 
bellious Senecas, had vowed that he would never as¬ 
sociate with the English or speak a word of the 
language. His wife was a white woman, long a cap¬ 
tive among the Algonquins in Canada and stolen back 


Sir JVilliam Johnson 213 

from, them by the Iroquois on a raid across the line. 
She had been offered the opportunity to return to her 
own family, but had steadfastly refused, declaring 
that she had never known any man the equal of her 
Indian husband in courtesy and kindness. 

Johnson had prevailed on Hiokato to come to Al¬ 
bany to hear what the white men had to say. At a 
later meeting he rallied the Indian on his haughty 
exclusiveness and said: “Why don’t you bring your 
white wife to call on my Indian wife?” Hiokato’s 
reply was quick and to the point. “I was afraid you 
whites would steal her as you do everything else we 
poor Indians have that is worth stealing.” 

Hiokato did find one thing at Albany that he ad¬ 
mired. This was the dress of a Scotch Highlander. 
The governor bought it for him, kilts, sporran, and 
all, and always thereafter the old man wore it as his 
ceremonial dress. 

The result of this council was that the Senecas 
were temporarily placated and promised to drive out 
the French agents that were busy in their country, 
especially one Joncaire, the busiest and most danger¬ 
ous of them all. Joncaire had been captured by the 
Indians as a child and knew their language, customs, 
and weaknesses better than they knew them them¬ 
selves. In return the Indians received large gifts— 
guns, ammunition, blankets, knives, kettles, and a great 
variety of trinkets of all kinds. 

The Indians had found the heavy, smoothbore mus¬ 
kets of the whites too cumbersome for their use on 
long hunts, and Johnson had had built for them a 


214 Boys* Own Book of Frontiersmen 

special gun shooting a half-ounce ball, the colonial’s 
gun shooting an ounce missile. It had a three-foot 
barrel and was about four feet two inches long over 
all. This was called the Indian Trade gun. Twelve 
hundred of these guns were distributed after this con¬ 
ference at Albany. 

Johnson was wearying of the long bickerings be¬ 
tween the governor and the assembly and the endless 
futile conferences and resigned his position as Su¬ 
perintendent of Indian Affairs. The Indians protested 
violently and sent delegations to interview the governor 
and plead for his reinstatement. It was of no effect. 
Johnson had had enough. 

There was another reason for his willingness to 
retire from politics. He had purchased an enormous 
tract of land northwest of Mount Johnson, known at 
first as the Kingsboro Patent, and later as the Johns¬ 
town Tract. Here he began to plan a still larger 
and more manorial house than the old one and here 
he hoped to settle down with the children of his first 
marriage, his Indian wife, his halfbreed children, and 
his red and white retainers to enjoy the life of a coun¬ 
try gentleman in this wilderness manor. 

His greatest pleasure was in hunting and fishing, al¬ 
though he had much of the regulation Irish interest 
in athletic sports of all kinds. Boxing specially ap¬ 
pealed to him. At one time during his connection 
with the colonial militia a discussion arose over the 
choice of a junior lieutenant. Johnson proposed that 
the two foremost candidates should strip and decide 
the matter with their fists. 


Sir William Johnson 215 . 

Into his dream of quiet obtruded disturbing rumors 
of trouble to the south. The Ohio Land Company- 
had been formed with two Virginians, George and 
Lawrence Washington, among its promoters for the 
settlement of land beyond the Alleghenies. This 
brought them in conflict with the French who still 
dominated the interior and word came from the west 
that French agents had appeared again among the 
Senecas arousing them against the threatened incursion 
of the Virginians. This emergency called loudly for 
Johnson and he took the field again to oppose the 
enemy from across the border. 

One of the first men he met in the Seneca country 
was Joncaire, the old foe of English influence with 
the western tribes. The meeting was a friendly one. 
Joncaire explained with elaborate casualness that his 
visit was a purely friendly one to the scenes and com¬ 
rades of his youth. He told Johnson of seeing Wash¬ 
ington at the post at Venango on the Pennsylvania 
frontier and they discussed the meaning of the Vir¬ 
ginians’ activity. To a New York colonial, anxious 
to extend the power of his own colony westward, Vir¬ 
ginia was almost as much an enemy country as was 
Canada. 

Johnson had no French and Joncaire no English. 
So these two white men meeting in an Indian village 
talked amicably and fluently in Indian. 

The storm of the Seven Years’ War was gather¬ 
ing that was to put an end to the power of France 
in the New World. Many men had premonitions of 
it, but no one could have guessed that before it was 


216 Boys 9 Own Book of Frontiersmen 

done men would be at each other’s throats in the 
forests of America, on the Continent of Europe, and 
in far-away India, and that when it was over France’s 
dream of colonial empire would be ended. It was 
this war, too, that made the British Empire a reality. 

The colonists knew only that trouble was afoot with 
the French again and the settlers in the Mohawk Val¬ 
ley stirred uneasily as they thought of the trails that 
led down from the north. More than once it had 
been proved that the white leaders of Indians need 
learn nothing of savagery from their savage allies. 

In this dark hour Albany turned again to the Iro¬ 
quois to stand as a living barrier between them and 
their northern foes. There was another council, and 
the Iroquois agreed to don the warpaint if their friend 
Johnson would lead them. He agreed and they sent 
round the wampum war belt to summon a thousand 
of the best from the Six Nations. They were to arm 
themselves, but would draw the same pay and rations 
as the white troops. In addition each warrior was to 
receive a “new blanket, a red flannel shirt, a blue hunt¬ 
ing jacket with red trimmings, and a pair of stout 
leather or buckskin leggings.” 

At this time the total number of the Iroquois was 
estimated at around twenty thousand. The French 
claimed to have ninety thousand Indians at their call, 
probably a considerable overestimate. The French 
held posts on the western slope of the Alleghenies at 
Venango, where French Creek joined the Allegheny, 
Presque Isle, and Fort le Boeuf, commanding the 


Sir William Johnson 217 

upper waters of the Ohio, which they claimed through¬ 
out its length. 

The English were beginning to awaken to their 
danger, and General Edward Braddock was sent over 
to take command of all the forces in America. Three 
expeditions were planned, one against Fort Duquesne, 
where Pittsburgh now stands, one against Quebec, and 
a third against Crown Point. Braddock was to com¬ 
mand the Duquesne attack with George Washington 
in command of the colonials, Johnson at Crown Point, 
and later an erratic young officer named Wolfe was 
selected to lead at Quebec. In addition to his military 
duties Johnson was made Commissioner of Indian Af¬ 
fairs for the whole of British North America. 

Braddock’s brave, blundering life came to a tragic 
end in the narrow ravine that led up to Duquesne, and 
Washington and his backwoodsmen alone saved the 
remnants from utter rout. This defeat has no bear¬ 
ing on the story of Johnson except that it at once in¬ 
creased his difficulties in dealing with the Senecas. 
Lukewarm in their friendship with the English at the 
best, they saw in this a forewarning of French triumph 
and wavered still more toward what they conceived 
to be the winning side. Johnson sent messengers among 
them and threw the whole weight of his great influence 
into the scale, but to no purpose. 

The Senecas sent only a handful for the attack on 
Crown Point and only six hundred Iroquois gathered 
at the old rendezvous at Mount Johnson. Among 
the faithful Mohawks was Joseph Brant the brother 
of Molly, then a boy of thirteen. He fought through 


218 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

the disorderly struggle that followed the ambush that 
Dieskau, the commander of the French, laid for them 
at Bloody Pond near Lake George. The expedition 
ended in disaster for both sides. The colonials fell 
back to their fortified camp at the southern end of 
the lake and stood off the attacks of the French and 
Indians. Johnson was wounded. 

Dieskau’s Indians had no stomach for an attack 
on a fortified position. He drove his regulars forward 
in columns of platoons continental fashion, only to 
have them wilt before the fire of the colonial riflemen. 
When Dieskau was wounded and captured the attack 
faded out. 

The commander of the New Hampshire troops who 
held the critical point in the fortified camp was a young 
man named John Stark who was to be the hero of the 
battle of Bennington in the Revolution. Johnson was 
made a baronet for his part in the footless battle, 
probably one of the least important of his many 
services to the cause of the colonies. 

This was the end of any practical operations 
around Lake Champlain and Lake George. The 
British were still blundering along under incompetent 
leaders. After he had recovered from his wound, 
Johnson went with Abercrombie in a fresh attack on 
Ticonderoga. He had five hundred Indians under him 
but did nothing, and after Abercrombie had lost two 
thousand men killed and wounded in half an hour he, 
too, quit. 

A gallant young officer named Montcalm succeeded 
Dieskau in command of the French and pressed the 


Sir William Johnson 


219 


campaign with vigor. He captured Fort William 
Henry at the head of Lake George while General 
Webb with forty-five hundred men sat still at Fort 
Edward fourteen miles away. Johnson came with two 
thousand provincials and his six hundred Iroquois and 
asked for a thousand regulars with which to raise the 
siege of William Henry. Webb refused and ordered 
him back. Afterward Johnson had the satisfaction of 
saying of this too careful officer: 

“Webb enjoys a solitary and unique distinction. He 
is the only British general—in fact, the only British 
officer of any rank—I ever knew or heard of who was 
personally a coward.’’ 

The winter of 1757-8 was one of doubt and dark¬ 
ness all along the border. In November the French 
Indians fell upon the little village of German Flats on 
the Mohawk and wiped it out. The Senecas were 
drifting farther and farther away from English con¬ 
trol and the French garrison at Fort Niagara was a 
center of infection. 

At this point General Amherst was sent over from 
England and under his able direction the tide began 
to turn. Johnson was sent as second in command to 
General Prideaux in an attack on Fort Niagara in 
1759. Prideaux was killed early in the action and 
Johnson was in command through most of the fighting. 
Colonel d’Aubrey appeared with a mixed force of 
French and Indians to raise the siege. Johnson turned 
and beat him in a pitched battle. The fort sur¬ 
rendered the next day. 

This was the first really successful military opera- 


220 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

tion in which Johnson had taken part and the only one 
in which he was chief officer. Although there were 
a thousand Iroquois with him, there was no looting or 
disorder, the severest test that could be imagined of 
his power as a leader over these wild warriors. 

The next year he marched with Amherst to the 
reduction of the French forts on Lake Ontario and 
along the upper St. Lawrence. Thence they moved 
to the capture of Montreal. By this time there were 
thirteen hundred Indians under Sir William, the 
largest force of red fighters that any white officer had 
led up to that time. Amherst had some fears for the 
behavior of his savage allies after the surrender and 
asked Johnson to use special care that there should 
be no outrage or looting. Johnson replied: 

“My Dear General: Replying to your note of this 
date, I take pleasure in saying that I shall not only 
cheerfully hold myself personally responsible for the 
behavior of every one of my Indians, but if you desire 
it, I shall detail a suitable detachment of my Senecas 
to act as provost guard in the town.” 

The end of this war found Johnson’s power as an 
Indian administrator broadly extended. All the 
French Indians were now under his charge, which 
meant everything in North America east of the 
Mississippi and north practically to Hudson Bay. In 
that capacity he dealt with the fire that Pontiac started 
among the Western Indians after the defeat of the 
French. This dragged on for nearly a year, until 


Sir William Johnson 


221 


Pontiac, a brave and able savage who had been second 
in command of the Indians who slaughtered Braddock’s 
troops at Fort Duquesne, gave over his long siege of 
Detroit and consented to come into the fold. 

Pontiac and Johnson met at Oswego in 1766 . It was 
a sight worth seeing when these two wise, honest, and 
shrewd leaders sat together to smoke and talk, sur¬ 
rounded by their warriors in full ceremonial attire. 
Even the Indians, critical as they were of social con¬ 
duct of all kinds, were more than satisfied. 

The same year he had a conference at Niagara with 
the representatives of the Western tribes and peace 
reigned for a season. There were nearly two hundred 
thousand Indians under his control, but his active work 
afield was beginning to slacken. Again he was able 
to settle back to his work as a landowner, develop¬ 
ing the great areas he already held and acquiring 
more. 

One of the largest of these was the Kingsland tract 
of nearly a hundred thousand acres. This had been 
more or less informally conveyed to him previously 
by Hendrick, chief of the Mohawks who was killed at 
the Bloody Pond. The tradition runs that Hendrick 
came to Johnson one day and told him that he had 
dreamed that he saw the white man in the uniform of 
a major general and that Johnson gave him one like 
it. Johnson promptly made the dream come true so 
far as Hendrick was concerned by giving him a 
gorgeous uniform. A few days later he told Hendrick 
he had dreamed that the Indians gave him a hundred 
thousand acres of land. Hendrick was a good sport 


222 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

and promised the land, saying, “Don’t let’s dream any 
more.” The grant was confirmed later by the council 
of the tribe. 

A year or two after acquiring this he bought from 
the Indians an area twenty-three miles long by four 
wide. By this time he held over two hundred thousand 
acres in his own name and was the largest individual 
landowner in America if not in the world. 

In the midst of his activity in his own behalf he did 
not forget the interests of the region generally. 
Among other things he had observed the work of Swiss 
and German rifle makers in Pennsylvania. These skill¬ 
ful smiths had the art of building the gun with the 
rifled barrel which was vastly superior to the smooth¬ 
bore muskets that were in general use elsewhere. 

He induced some of them to settle in the Mohawk 
Valley, among them Hawkins, founder of one of the 
great gun-making families of early days. In the first 
half of the last century to own a Hawkins rifle was a 
patent of nobility among riflemen. Johnson all un¬ 
wittingly was helping to lay the foundation for the 
superiority of colonial marksmen over the British 
troops when the Revolution came. 

He was near the end of his busy life now. Already 
the mutterings of Revolution were growing louder and 
he was much disturbed. All his life he had been a 
loyal servant of the British crown and in his family 
that tradition ran deep. But he was a colonial, too, 
and he knew the stubbornness and resourcefulness of 
the backwoodsman when he was once stirred to action. 
More than once he expressed his doubt of the ability 


Sir William Johnson 223 

of the crown to subdue the colonists if it came to the 
acid test of war. 

His Indians were still much on his conscience. By 
now the Mohawks were so much among the whites 
that in manner of life they were hardly distinguishable. 
Farther west the tribes were still savages with a strong 
feeling of kinship even with hereditary enemies when 
it came to a trial of strength with the whites. 

Lord Dunmore’s War with the tribes of the Ohio 
Valley that ended with the defeat of Cornstalk at 
Point Pleasant on the eve of the Revolution sent the 
old wind of unrest whispering through the Seneca 
villages. In was on July n, 1774 , that Johnson 
received a delegation of the tribesmen and spoke to 
them, advising order and counseling them to keep the 
peace. Two hours later he was overcome by a stroke 
and died. His last words were to his comrade and 
Indian kinsman, Joseph Brant. 

“Joseph, control your people. Control your people. 
I am going away.” 

It is idle to speculate on what Sir William Johnson 
would have done or the influence he would have ex¬ 
erted if he had lived through the Revolution. His 
sons and kinsmen chose the British side and the great 
estate that he had built up vanished in the red tide 
of war. It is hard, though, to picture Sir William 
Johnson loosing his Iroquois against white settlements 
as the Butlers did in Cherry Valley and at Wyoming. 

His Iroquois fought on the side of the British and 
lost, and the last of the Six Nations went down in the 
wreck of British interests that resulted. 


224 Boys’ Own Book of Frontiersmen 

Among the great frontiersmen Johnson had several 
distinctions. He fought with the Indians instead of 
against them. Although a frontiersman in time and 
place, friend and comrade of Indians in war and 
peace, knowing them as few white men have ever done 
before or since, he kept the manner of life and the 
personal bearing of an English gentleman. His 
Iroquois mourned him as one man who had never lied 
to them nor betrayed them, fit heir of their beloved 
Father Curler. 


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